Mr. Speaker, it makes me laugh a little to hear the members of the NDP talk about competition when they are always against free trade agreements.
We need to look past all the self-congratulation in the Conservative motion. The sky is blue and so they paint everything blue. In reality, the purpose of this motion is to encourage free trade and bilateral agreements.
It was our government that signed the first agreement with the Americans in 1995 when Doug Young was the transport minister. For our part, we are going to ignore all the hoopla, all the Conservative government's self-congratulation and talk of blue skies, and we are going to support this motion because we are in favour of free trade agreements. We are in favour of these bilateral agreements.
Unlike others, we think that this will have a positive impact on the entire economy, for customers and for the general public. Clearly, there will always be problems in terms of price.
The bottom line is whether we are in agreement with the bilateral agreement, yes or no. That is what the motion is all about.
As a Liberal, we were there in 1995. We are supportive of that. When I was minister of immigration, we were talking with the Chinese government regarding tourism and of course there is always a link between transport and tourism. There was an agreement eventually but we already started to negotiate at that time. So it is to open the sky, to open the market and it is good politics. It is not a partisan issue; it is a matter of what is in Canada's best interests. Are we going far enough? That is an issue we have to take a look at, but clearly I believe, and we on this side believe, that those accords and agreements are essential.
We could talk for hours and hours. There are always things that could be improved, but let us be realistic. This is not a law; it is a motion. As such, these are wishes. It may be wishful thinking, but this motion is a way for the government to say that it wants Parliament to indicate what policy it would like to have in the future. Once again, the member opposite, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and I—we should write this down somewhere—do not tend to agree on things, but we agree on this motion.
I would, however, like to share some key messages. Neither the U.S. Open Skies policy nor the Canadian blue sky policy should permit cabotage, under which a foreign airline may carry domestic traffic between two points in another country. This is something that should be examined later. The Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities must take that into consideration when negotiating agreements if he truly wants to guarantee this procedure. At the time, Jean Lapierre, who was the transport minister, had already begun discussions and negotiations in this regard. I think that we need to take that into consideration.
We know that bilateral air transport agreements are negotiated jointly by Transport, Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the Canadian Transportation Agency. We must also send clear messages not only to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, but also to the Minister of Foreign Affairs to ensure that what happened in the United Arab Emirates does not happen again. Because of problems caused by broadening the agreements, we lost Camp Mirage, which was supporting our troops in Afghanistan. These are important things that must be taken into account.
To the thousands of listeners stampeding over here to listen to my speech and other speeches—