Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to raise this issue again. I am sure I am going to get the canned points from the parliamentary secretary. They seem to be unable to even think in this place anymore, as we were handed this speech from the Prime Minister's Office.
I have some very important questions about procurement in this Parliament with regard to Canada Post procuring vehicles from Turkey instead of Windsor, where we have a minivan that would meet the specifications for that procurement. The Canada Post argument was that it is responsible to tender this out under the WTO and NAFTA, which is wrong and a lie.
In fact, I had parliamentary research issue its own report on this. It is independent. It is done for all parliamentarians. It is one of the important pieces our democracy has left. It has told me that the only obligations to nations for procurement on this type of an issue are to the United States, Mexico, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Liechtenstein, Aruba, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Peru and Chile. It is absolutely false that we could not have had that procurement here.
It is interesting that the government, which claims fiscal accountability, is borrowing billions upon billions of dollars that we have to pay interest on in the future. We are passing that debt on to our children, yet we are not allowed to do procurement in our own country, when it has committed to keep jobs and communities alive.
My community has had the highest unemployment rate for a number of different years. The auto industry has gone through a number of tough years and is re-emerging. This was a perfect opportunity to provide more stimulus to Canadians. Instead, the government is borrowing from the people of Canada and sending the money to Turkey for no reason whatsoever. It is absolutely unacceptable.
It did this to the Navistar as well. Think of the poor people of Chatham. We saved that truck plant and could have produced trucks for our own soldiers. The men and women of Chatham could create the products that our own service people would use. Instead, the government allowed that procurement to go to the United States. Under our national defence procurement, it could do that. What is interesting is that the U.S., in that plant in Texas, can jump the queue on Canadian vehicles. It also mandated its vehicles to be produced there. It was a double standard.
We have seen two specific cases where procurements are going to areas of manufacturing. We have had so many problems. We have a high dollar. We have poor trade relations with other countries. We go by these rules that are made up, in terms of NAFTA and the WTO, that do not apply. The department is propagating an absolute lie.
I asked the minister about that. He decided to not even address the issue. He did not even decide to take this on. This is unacceptable. We are calling right now for a procurement policy that is fair, responsible and done with other similar countries, as they are doing as well. This is not a system that is done independently from Canada. This is one that the United States as well as European countries do in terms of procurement, including Turkey.
I ask this minister to go back and make sure the government switches its decision and buys these vehicles from Canadians.