Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank all my colleagues for this important debate. I would like to acknowledge my colleague from British Columbia for the work he has done on freeing wine across Canada. I understand now his campaign to free beer is also very popular among Canadians. It is something we should continue moving forward on as we start to liberate the Canadian economy from provincial trade barriers.
I want to talk about bales. No, this is not a Liberal speech that is irrelevant to the topic. This is actually a very relevant example of what happens with interprovincial trade barriers and regulations.
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Barrie—Innisfil. He has a very important topic he wants to talk about also.
One might ask what hay bales have to do with interprovincial trade barriers. Actually, this is a very real story. In August 2003, we had a horrible frost on my farm. It took out my crop. It cost me and many of my neighbours in the area of millions of dollars. For myself alone, it cost me about a quarter of a million dollars in one night.
When a farmer has an established crop and that happens, he looks at what he can do to salvage that income. We worked with our local agriculture officials and they realized that canola, for example, made great horse feed. We did everything right and we baled that crop. We salvaged it. Then we went on the Internet, Western Producer, and places like that and we sold that crop. We sold it into Alberta. It worked out great. The horse guys in Alberta were happy. We were happy. Everything was happy-go-lucky. We got everything baled and ready to ship the crop into Alberta. The trucks hit the border, and who would have known that the regulations for a trailer in Alberta when hauling hay are different? It required a different coloured sign and different symbols on the wide load signs, and different permits.
Farmers look at this and ask, “What are you talking about? If it's safe to haul in Saskatchewan why can't it be safe to haul in Alberta, or be funded?” A neighbour gets a fine, then another neighbour gets a fine. All of a sudden the guys from Alberta are saying it is not worth the hassle to buy the hay from Saskatchewan, even though they really need it because of the drought. However, because of the interprovincial trade barriers, the regulations that were put in place, it made that move impossible to happen.
That is just one example of how a barrier like this really restricts the flow of goods across our country. It is a very real example of what costs people thousands and thousands of dollars for no reason at all. The roads were not made any safer by having different regulations. They were not improved. There was no issue other than the fact that Alberta wanted to do it one way, and Saskatchewan's NDP government at the time wanted to do it another way.
It went the other way also, when we had stuff coming back from Alberta to Saskatchewan, we had to get a permit. The Saskatchewan NDP government at the time said it did not want to get rid of the permits because they were a good cash cow. We have to remember that back at that time all our kids were moving to Alberta, so the NDP was looking for any type of taxation it could get. This was one way to do it.
When we look at that we realize that is a direct impact on what can happen when we have improper trade regulations.
I sit on the trade committee. I was actually the former chair of the trade committee. I always find it really interesting when we bring in different producers from around Canada to talk about trade. They say we need trade, that it is very important. When we ask about internal trade they say it is actually easier for them to sell their stuff in Washington than to take it out of B.C. and sell it in Alberta.
We have to scratch our heads and ask if this make sense. What is the logic behind that? What are we really trying to accomplish as a country, as a confederation, when it is easier to export our goods than to sell them next door in our own country? Those things need to be eliminated. The Comeau case really provides the government with a unique opportunity to be involved in helping eliminate barriers.
We have heard speeches here in the House today talking about how this case is probably going to go to the Supreme Court and be ruled upon by the Supreme Court. The provinces should be very worried about that. They should be so worried they might want to negotiate something beforehand to put some stability in place, so that it is done in such a way that the barriers are actually removed.
The federal government has a chance to show tremendous leadership on this file if it so chooses. Keep in mind, I am also on the trade committee that has been consulting and delaying TPP passage. Let us face it, the Liberals are going to let Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump actually write our foreign trade policy. If the Liberals would not write their own foreign trade policy, why would they write their policy here in Canada? They will just vacate that to provinces and accept whatever comes out of it. That way they are not responsible. Why show leadership? They are not used to doing that.
Another example of silliness in this market, I think, is that all of us here in Ottawa sneak across to Quebec and go to Costco. I can buy beef there, bread, wine, and beer. I can buy beer, but I better not bring it back to Ontario where I live because then I would be breaking the law. I would be like Al Capone. However, that beer in Quebec is the exact same beer that is in Ontario. It is just as safe, brewed probably in the same factory, but yet for some reason we have a barrier to prevent that from happening. It does not make sense. Canadians cannot figure that one out. The reality is, they are just ignoring it and doing it anyway.
A colleague from the NDP just stated the exact same thing. We have already seen wine shipments going across Canada, breaking these barriers as we speak. In reality, Canadians are already doing what the market should be allowed to do, and that is trade interprovincially, free.
We look at legislation, and the Liberals say we should not use litigation to solve this; we should actually negotiate and wait until negotiations move forward. Like I said previously, we could use this court case to enhance our argument in that process if we want to go through a consulting process, but litigation is a valid form for settling this. When we are breaking somebody's constitutional right, that is what the courts are there to do, whether we like it or not.
We have a perfect example of where that has happened here, right in front of us in the Senate today. Bill C-14 is because of litigation. It is because the court did not like the way the law was written. I do not agree with the court. I do not necessarily like it, but litigation was the process that was used that sent it back to this House to rewrite the law. It is valid. In fact, the government is doing it through C-14 as we speak. To say that we should not do it that way just does not make sense. It is hypocritical. It is already happening.
The reality is, the courts are there to actually protect the rights of Canadians, so in this scenario, Canadians feel that they should be able to trade freely among the provinces. I should be able to go to B.C. and sell some stuff, and the member from Kelowna should be able to come back to Prince Albert and sell his goods. As long as they meet the safety requirements, as long as they are safe, where is the issue? Why do we have these barriers?
If we looked at them more closely, I think we would see there is a good reason to get rid of them, and I will give credit to the western provinces. They actually showed some leadership on this. The New West Partnership, Premier Wall, showed lots of leadership in trying to identify what these barriers are and remove them.
Labour mobility, getting rid of the situation that we had with trucks hauling hay across the border. These things need to be eliminated, and I want to congratulate the provinces that have taken this seriously because it just happens that those are the provinces that are doing very well in this confederation. Saskatchewan has a growing, booming economy, regardless of what is happening in the oil and gas sector, what is happening everywhere else. It is still holding its own.
If we want to do economic stimulus, if we want to boost this economy without spending a dime, let us deal with these. This is one thing the Liberals could do and it would not cost them a dime, but the impact across this country would be spread and felt immediately.