Mr. Speaker, it is indeed about time we were debating this agreement in the House of Commons. It has been a long time coming. In fact, when I became minister of international trade, way back in 2010, negotiations on this agreement had already begun, thanks to the leadership of prime minister Harper and my predecessor in that role as trade minister, Stockwell Day.
It has been a long time coming, but it should be acknowledged that at that time, when I became minister, China was kind of all the rage. We hear that it might be all the rage nowadays. However, one of the things that struck me at the time was it seemed to me there were a fair number of inequalities in the trading relationship with China. We were running a severe trade deficit. Our investors in China were having a great deal of difficulty having their legal rights respected. I thought perhaps we should make our number one trading priority the negotiation of the Canada-Europe free trade agreement, as I chose to call it.
It did become the focus of our department's work, and certainly my work as minister. I felt it was an opportunity where we would be bringing together communities with similar values and similar economic approaches. In many cases, there were similar languages and similar legal systems. The opportunities were tremendous, and as we saw, the negotiations proceeded with tremendous success.
Why was it so important? We had a study undertaken to determine whether or not it was worthwhile embarking on negotiations. That study found that there would be a $12-billion annual boost to the Canadian economy from such an agreement, and that was way before 2010. When we hear that number, and I have seen it bandied about in this debate, it is reasonable to assess that the number that is now almost a decade old would be much higher today as the economies and opportunities have advanced. Therefore, I think we are looking at far more than a $12-billion boost to the Canadian economy. We will certainly need that. That will be a boost that will be coming as a result of a trade agreement like this.
There were some very special things about how this was negotiated that were different than any negotiation before. One of them was the inclusion of the provinces. Canada is a challenging jurisdiction for the negotiation of trade agreements because much of what is on the table, much of what we will have to implement by way of legislation or regulatory changes, is in provincial jurisdiction, thanks to our Constitution. As a result, we structured a negotiating process that had the provinces at the table for the very first time. I know the narrative, the history, that mainstream academics like to talk about in the media was that we did not have great co-operation. We had better co-operation on trade with the provinces than any other government ever in history. It was groundbreaking, and very important. It was one of the reasons we were able to succeed in this complex negotiation, never mind the complexities of the many jurisdictions on the other side of the equation in the European Union.
We also had unprecedented consultations with the various stakeholders. Some of it was structural. Some of it was regular briefings. For example, I remember meeting with the municipalities across Canada, and so on, so that they were apprised, because there were issues that were going to affect them. All of these played into it.
One of the things I saw as a tremendous opportunity for Canada was the fact that if we look at all the countries of the European Union, we have here in Canada significant populations from each and every one of those jurisdictions. I thought about the tremendous potential for us to harness the fact that we have people with ties of language, culture, ethnicity, family, and previous business. We have many recent immigrants with those ties back home, and given the opportunity to expand that trade, think of the potential that could be undertaken there.
Canada has had a unique challenge in our trade that is also our greatest strength. We have beside us the United States of America, a country with similar values, similar languages, and similar legal system, and great roots that we have in common. Therefore, for Canadians and Canadian businesses, that has given us a huge potential to trade. We have such a strong trading relationship. As a relatively small country, we depend on the ability to export elsewhere, especially to that huge market in the United States.
However, the problem for Canada became, and I believe still is, that it is almost too easy. It is so much easier to go and form trading relationships with people where we do not have to learn a new language, or a new legal system or jurisdictions. We can talk about the football game we watched on TV, or the sitcom that was on the networks last week, and still have all those ties together.
To make the decision to go somewhere else in the world for our exports, to learn those new markets, to learn the news systems and the local rules, is much more challenging. However, we have this ace in the hole of those populations here.
As trade minister, one of the things I worked very hard to do was work through those various communities in Canada. Almost every single one of them had a Canadian and whatever the country, members can take their pick, German, Belgian, whatever, chamber of commerce that brought together people of those backgrounds and those interests in Canada who were ready and willing to pursue those opportunities. I can say without exception that every single one of them was excited, engaged, and looking forward to the opportunities that would be presented by this remarkable trade agreement, such as the opportunities to prosper, export, create jobs, and the like.
When we think about it, there were other opportunities on the other side. I remember entertaining many potential foreign investors looking at Canada at the time. What they told me again and again was that there were so many things that were attractive about Canada. Under our Conservative government, we had delivered the lowest level of taxation on new job creators of any comparable jurisdictions. We had the most skilled workforce, the highest proportion of people with post-secondary education, and I could go on. They looked at our debt-to-GDP ratio, and the fact that we were focused on balanced budgets, and said, “As long as there is a Conservative government in place and we see these levels of low debt and deficit, we can have confidence that the numbers we put in our pro forma for taxation will remain for the foreseeable future, and that creates certainty for our investment.” They looked at all of those things and then said, “If you get that free trade agreement with Europe, picture it, you will be the only country in the world, the only major developed economy, with trade agreements with the two biggest economies in the world, the United States through NAFTA, and the European Union. If you're looking for a place to invest a platform, a place to create jobs and produce the products that you're going to export into those marketplaces, nowhere would be better than Canada.”
We will see if that will remain the case. Hopefully, the government will be able to do a reasonable job, although it has already started unilateral disarmament with the Americans vis-à-vis NAFTA. However, if it can hold its own in those negotiations we will continue to hold that position and this agreement will hold that promise for Canada, and that will continue to be the case. It now looks unlikely that the United States, with its current political direction, will proceed very far with its efforts to negotiate a free trade agreement with Europe. That is a huge potential opportunity for us as a destination for investment in that regard. That is something that, when we look at this agreement, when we look at the potential that Canada has, is one of the things that to me was very promising from a job creation and investment perspective.
However, there are worrying signs. I talked about that unilateral disarmament approach of the Liberal government, where it has already volunteered to look at renegotiating NAFTA. The problem is this. Notwithstanding the perceptions that people have, the Americans are not ideological trade negotiators. They are very much self-interested negotiators and they look to maximize their self-interests. If it were not for the charm of one Brian Mulroney and his ability to connect a relationship with Ronald Reagan, we would never have had a NAFTA that was as fair and beneficial for both countries as it is. Therefore, I am very concerned about the potential to do that.
The Liberals are not natural trade negotiators. In all of their 13 years in power in the previous Liberal government, they only negotiated three trade agreements. Some people said two earlier. It was three. They were with economic behemoth powerhouses: Costa Rica, Chile, and Israel. Those agreements were so unambitious that when I was trade minister we reopened all three so that we could make them into stronger agreements that delivered more benefits to Canada. I am pleased to say that we delivered on those. Therefore, are they natural negotiators? I do not know. Fortunately, they inherited this Canada-Europe trade agreement, and although they did find a way to delay it for a year and put a lot of stuff at risk, I hope that 90% of it is intact when compared to what we had arrived at in terms of agreements with the Europeans when we left government and that there will be potential there.
I am excited that this agreement is finally here in the House of Commons and that some of that potential can be harnessed. These things take much longer than they should because of the complexity of so many jurisdictions not only here in Canada but, more importantly, in the European Union.
At the end of the day, free trade means less government; free trade means lower taxes; and free trade means more opportunity, more jobs, more economic growth, and more economic development. That is why this Conservative Party has been so associated with all the great advances of free trade throughout the history of the past century or so in Canada. I am very proud to have played a very small role in that, together with my colleagues.