Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sudbury.
I want to take the opportunity to once again thank the incredible staff and people who have made Parliament work in the last 10 months. A year ago, if I were told we would be in this situation where there would only be a small handful of us in the House and the vast majority would be participating virtually, I would never have believed it. The way the staff have incorporated and made this seamlessly work so everyone can participate while staying safe is truly remarkable. I want to thank them for the incredible work they have done to make this a reality.
I am glad this opposition day motion was brought forward today. We are discussing a very important topic. I always get annoyed by those opposition day motions that tend to attack a person or the individual character attacks that we have seen in the past. However, this is one has really brought forward an important issue to discuss, and it is that relationship between Canada and the United States and our trade with it.
I personally do not have any issue with this committee being formed. At the end of the day, this committee and the work that it would do by interviewing various witnesses and bringing very different people forward to examine that relationship will probably paint a very good picture of what has transpired over the last couple of years with respect to that relationship.
We have to remember where we were after Donald Trump was elected. He had an interventionist approach on how the United States would work and its relationship with other countries, in particular Canada. Everyone was quite worried about what that meant. Back then I picked 20 businesses in my riding to speak to about their relationship with the U.S. I knew they had close economic ties with the U.S. I wanted to understand what their anxieties and fears were about what a new deal with the United States could look like.
When we were going through the negotiations, as the teams were discussing back and forth, tariffs were put in place by the U.S. and as a reactive measure, retaliatory tariffs were brought in by Canada. We saw that Canada actually had a very good leverage point when it came to dealing with the United States and talking trade with it. We might be one-tenth the size of its population, but we are a major economic resource for the Americans. We are their number one trading partner, bigger than China, Japan and the U.K. combined. The United States depends on Canada a lot for exports.
We saw how those retaliatory tariffs put pressure on Donald Trump through Congress and through the individual congressional districts affected by them. They pressured him to work out the USMCA. When the USMCA came forward, we saw a deal that, in my opinion, corrected a lot of inaccuracies or differences that may have occurred over the last 20 or 30 years since the trade agreement came into place. It allowed opportunities to bring new issues to light, focusing on the environment more and looking at things through various different lenses that perhaps we did not do 30 years ago. The deal between the two countries gave us opportunities.
Every day $2 billion goes back and forth between Canada and the United States because of that trading relationship. It is no small amount of money. Indeed, I would argue that we are in a very good negotiating point with the United States because of that. Of course, we do not want to fall into the trap of being incredibly reliant on one country, and for quite a while we were. We want to ensure we look at our trading relationships throughout the world so we can become diversified with respect to where our trade occurs.
With respect to the committee discussed in the opposition motion, if the motion passes and a committee is formed, there is great opportunity to start to re-examine that relationship from a parliamentary level and dig into the details of how negotiations can be done better, how we can look at other things such as our impact on climate and how we can ensure that the best interests of Canadians are taken into account.
I agree strongly that good trade deals give us better quality of life. I do not disagree with my Conservative colleague who talked about the increased quality of life that has come from trade relationships. I studied economics. I am a strong supporter of trade. I apologize if Liberals from 40 years ago were less so, but I certainly see the benefit in it. A trade relationship when done properly can be a win for both sides. A Conservative colleague said earlier that there was no good deal unless it was good for both sides, or something to that effect. I agree completely. With trade and the concept and practical implications of trade, quality of life can increase on both sides of the trading relationship. That is the whole point. That is why we strive to look for new opportunities for trade throughout the world.
However, it is important to remember that when we are talking about trade, we are talking about a negotiation and about concessions, but concessions that are at the expense of even greater gains. This is where I find the arguments from the Bloc and the NDP to be very difficult to accept. Quite often we hear about wanting to have it both ways, not wanting to give up anything and still getting the gains from trade. They have to understand and accept the fact that there will be concessions, but at the expense of having an even greater gain realized from those concessions. A trade relationship is all about that.
I am really looking forward to this committee, if the motion is adopted. It is an opportunity to look inward at how we do trade, look at that relationship with the U.S., fight for other issues that are connected to trade, such as security, climate change and how our environment is impacted, and look for commonalities. If any two countries in the world can make a trade relationship even better, they are Canada and the United States for all the reasons that have been given today.
I am happy that we have had this wholesome discussion today on such an important topic. The relationship we have with the United States and our trading ability with it has improved the quality of life in Canada over the last several decades. Indeed, if it is done properly and done right, it can continue to see us prospering well into the future.