Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure and some degree of surprise that I rise in the House today to debate Bill C-47, an act to amend the Department of External Affairs Act.
I would like to tell the House why I am surprised to be speaking today. It is because I was not told until 4 p.m. yesterday that the bill would be up for debate. The government did not bother to tell our House leader's office until 3.30 p.m.
Is it another example of how the government wants to act in matters such as this one? It possibly handles the country like this as well. Even more surprising, Bill C-47 was not an upcoming government bill on the House of Commons Order Paper for Monday.
Only yesterday the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader attempted to lecture my esteemed Reform colleague from Peace River and myself on a point of order about how hard the government was working to give us advanced warning of upcoming events.
If less than a day is what the government considers to be plentiful warning time, I suppose the member for Kingston and the Islands was right. However, with the bill going into third reading the government has no real reason to spring it on us.
I would ask the government to give us an informal call in the future so that we have a fair chance to prepare ourselves. After all, if we cannot have serious, well prepared debates in Parliament, Canadians will not be getting the service they deserve.
Getting to the issue at hand, Bill C-47, the Reform Party will be supporting the bill. It modernizes the Department of Foreign Affairs. Although Bill C-47 will not bring about major changes in substance to the way the Department of Foreign Affairs is operated, it shows an evolution of the department to reflect the needs and values of Canadians in the 1990s.
I would like to highlight what I think Canadians expect from the Department of Foreign Affairs. Many people do not even realize it is of much importance to them. My constituents will ask why we are spending so much time working on that committee and in that area. I could ask them what they watch in the newscast at night, what their jobs are or what many of their jobs are related to. In my constituency we have a large petrochemical industry, almost 90 per cent of which goes to foreign areas. We have agriculture, a great deal of which goes to the United States and other places. When those matters are mentioned they realize the importance of foreign affairs in their everyday life.
As a result we have hopefully encouraged more interest in foreign affairs. At least now I am asked on occasion: "What is happening in foreign affairs?" The modernization the government is undergoing in Bill C-47 provides an opportunity to highlight the directions in which we think foreign affairs should go as the people of Canada are telling us from a grassroots level.
Canadians want to think of us as a middle power, as being in a middle power position. They want to be proud of Canada. In many cases we are a bit laid back when it comes to talking about how great our country really is. Only when they travel outside the country and talk to others about Canada do they realize what sort of country we have and what sort of profile we have. We need to use that profile to develop a far thinking foreign affairs policy to help us utilize not only opinions from outside but what we have going for us on the inside.
In yesterday's statement I was disappointed in not seeing emphasis being put on the use of more of our multicultural benefits, our people who are trained, who know, who have relatives and understand other countries. I was also disappointed that we did not make more use of our foreign students and Canadians we send to universities around the world. They are a great asset we do not keep track of and we do not utilize.
I hear on the streets that CIDA needs to become more accountable. Certainly people want a transparent agency. They are not prepared to hear about the terrible mistakes made in that agency or about the ridiculous projects that are funded such as the underwater breeding of water buffalo in Thailand. They do not particularly want to fund projects unless they see some value to them for the people they are trying to help.
There has to be accountability. There has to be a reporting mechanism to Parliament. There has to be a greater utilization of NGOs in that whole area. One of my colleagues will be talking about that later. We certainly need to target what we have to do. We cannot do everything for everybody, and we recognize that.
In looking at the bill, we should be concerned and asking questions about administration from the top. We should be asking if the minister really needs under-secretaries. Do we really need the deputy positions? At this point in our financial crisis we need to be asking: Should we not be cutting from the top instead of doing it the easy way by cutting from the bottom? Often we cut from the bottom up instead of from the top down. We should emphasize to the minister that we want it to be different in the Department of Foreign Affairs. We should be examining under-secretary and deputy positions long before we talk about cutting people in the field.
As far as world organization is concerned, I agree with the hon. member opposite who said that our foreign service is doing an excellent job. I have had the opportunity to visit a number of our foreign consulates and will continue to visit them. We have some great leadership out there and people who are doing the job for us. I will come back to that point in a minute. The world is now divided into three units. It consists of the EU, developing and working together, becoming a very important economic, political and in some cases military unit.
The second unit is the Asia-Pacific region. It started out with one tiger, then two. Now there are seven tigers that are really moving forward in the world. We must recognize that and learn how to deal with them.
The third unit is the Americas, which have been ignored by us, with the exception of the U.S., for a long time. Now we are starting to look at these countries, at Mexico and Central and South America. They become the third major unit of the world with which we will be dealing.
It is important that we put into place our role in the Americas. It is important that we become a leader. When talking to people in some countries, particularly in South America, they say: "We want Canada to be our mediator, to be between us and the elephant. You are used to sleeping beside that elephant and dealing with it. We want you to take a leadership role in helping us to know how to deal with the U.S." They are looking for us to
show leadership. At this point they are basically saying that they have not seen us take that role as strongly as we might.
I mentioned peacekeeping. That is a very important area and one in which Canada has a high profile. It is important that we thank all those peacekeepers for the fantastic ambassadors they are to the world. I believe we all agree on that. As well, we must recognize that we need to know where we are going and what we are doing when it comes to peacekeeping. We just cannot be everywhere. Therefore, we must develop criteria.
The old threat of the cold war is gone. Now we have a much more difficult threat to our security. We have all kinds of things like health problems, the AIDS epidemic and many other health problems that threaten our country.
We also have environmental problems. Countries like China are proposing to build coal generating plants which could affect the environment around the world. We need to be leaders in that area and show that leadership to other countries of the world.
Immigration, migration and refugees are also problems we have to deal with.
We are concerned that 80 per cent of trade is with the U.S. We realize we must diversify. Unfortunately, a great many people say: "Okay, I deal with the Americans. They speak the same language, they understand us and it is very easy". However when times get a little tough, companies start looking offshore for trading arrangements and then as soon as times get better in the U.S. they drop those connections and go back to the U.S. Industries must be encouraged to change.
I have had an opportunity over the last year and a half to meet a lot of different people. I recall some members here met with a Kuwaiti group of MPs. The one question we had from the Kuwaiti MPs was: why did Canada not get more contracts? Obviously we were there and we tried to do our share in that whole situation in Kuwait, but we did not get the contracts. We were there to do everything else but we did not get the business contracts for the rebuilding of the country. Why? There was one answer which was that we are not aggressive enough. We are too passive, too laid back. We do not push this country they way we need to.
I met with the ambassador to Chile and received much the same message: Why are you not more aggressive? Why do you not take more action?
This summer I was in London, Sweden and Paris and I asked the question: "How could we do more business? What more should we do?" I was told: "You need to become more aggressive". That is the message the world is giving us. As MPs we must then carry that message and certainly foreign affairs has to get that message out.
Foreign affairs is important to Canadians. It now represents a couple of million jobs in this country. It represents 30 per cent of our GDP. Therefore when we talk about its importance we should not have any trouble convincing anyone.
The new arrangements replacing GATT with the World Trade Organization will go a long way in helping us market our products. I really believe this will be a forward moving process for us as Canadians.
The expansion of NAFTA obviously is of significance, something that the Canadian government should greatly encourage. It should be part of any foreign affairs policy and one that should be greatly emphasized.
We cannot underestimate the importance of the Americans. They have largely been responsible for our becoming the seventh largest trading nation while we are only 31st in population. While Canadians strive to diversify their trade, we must continue to emphasize the importance of our relationship with the U.S. Therefore the trade aspect of foreign affairs is extremely important.
In the embassies I have visited I have found they now put more and more emphasis on the trade aspect. It must be encouraged and continued. We have to be a little careful as well because someone in France raised an interesting point with me. We have about $6 billion in trade with France and about $6 billion in trade with Korea. But 60 per cent of the trade with France is in sophisticated fine tuned instrumentation. With Korea about 95 per cent is raw materials.
Before we change the whole emphasis of foreign affairs and get rid of our European connections to go rushing to the new markets of South America and the Orient, we have to be a little careful and look at what we are selling. We will run out of raw materials. That is not where the jobs are. That is not the area we should be emphasizing. Trade is an important part of foreign affairs. The Canadian people expect it to be an important part.
We have mentioned other areas that we should discuss very briefly, certainly UN reform. The United Nations is 50 years old today. It is disappointing to look at the document we got yesterday to see a lack of any sort of forward thinking in terms of what we mean when we say that we are in favour of UN reform.
What do we mean? What are we going to do? How are we going to be leaders to change the UN? We can make many suggestions but the same terminology comes out of foreign affairs or any department of government. We must look at efficiency, accountability and effectiveness.
We hear the horror stories. People like Major-General MacKenzie talked about phoning the UN on a Friday afternoon. "We have the troops pinned down. What do we do?" He was told: "Call back on Monday". Then the system was reformed. They
put in a fax machine. We could then have written confirmation that he was in trouble. He still had to wait until Monday morning.
The United Nations needs to be reformed and it should be done from the top. We need some ideas. We need to start off. We need to force countries to pay their dues. I do not blame the Americans for not paying their dues because they are saying: "Get your act together and then we will pay our dues". We have to be in a position where we can be leaders in those reforms.
The UN needs an early warning system. My wife and I toured Rwanda and stayed in villages in 1985. We knew then a conflict was brewing and that the two tribes were having problems. We have had all kinds of peacekeepers and all kinds of NGOs tell us about the problems brewing but we did nothing. I applaud the government for mentioning in its statement yesterday that it needed to develop an early warning system. Then I noticed that the government totally forgot about the bad idea it had about the sort of UN force where we would lose our sovereignty. While that idea was floated it certainly died, fortunately for all of us.
We need to deal with international criminals. The people who commit these atrocious crimes need to know that they are going to be punished by the world. They need to know that the UN will deal with international criminals and that it will be much faster than our criminal justice system.
We need to have a whole administrative reorganization and we can be leaders there. Also, we need to examine our membership and we need to push for a much higher role in the United Nations.
As well, we should look at the reorganization of the whole Department of Foreign Affairs and, most important, our foreign missions. We are opening more and more of them but we need to examine the job they are doing. We need to set some criteria.
Last year I visited nine embassies and I asked them: "If you were on the foreign affairs committee what would you want to change?" Almost to the very last person and almost to the clerks they said: "We want a definite direction; leadership from the top; set an example and stop sending mixed messages. One day you are this way; the next day you are that way. We do not know what we are supposed to represent Canada as being because we are getting mixed messages from the top".
I am emphasizing leadership and that is what we should be getting out of the reform of Bill C-47. We should be coming up with major ideas for that leadership.
Again mentioning peacekeeping, criteria must be developed. It is so important. How long are the peacekeepers going to be there? What is it going to cost? What exactly are we trying to accomplish? We have a great many hot spots on the burner right now. Places like Burundi, Nigeria and the former Soviet Union, just to name a few, are potential hot spots where we may have to get involved. We need some very important planning.
The last couple of days we have heard a lot about grassroots public input. I get a little upset when I read in the reports that we have spent five days debating major foreign affairs issues. The problem is that we could have read the results or what was going to happen in the newspaper the day we were preparing our speeches. The decisions were released early. They came out at the United Nations. We had already confirmed we were going back to Bosnia but we were debating it.
As rookies we can probably take that, but I guess after we have been here a while we start saying: "Yes, we want consultation, but do not make up your mind until you hear it". That has to be the message that goes through when we start talking about reforming foreign affairs and the way it is handled. Listen to us. Do not make decisions beforehand.
I understand that in the next week-and we probably will not find out until the day before-we are going to be debating whether we should send our troops back to the former Yugoslavia. It would be nice to think that every member in the House could talk about that; could give their point of view on whether we should renew our return over there or has the government already decided? I hope that it has not.
When it comes to public input I go a bit further and look at the national assembly that we had, the group which met here. We invited 125 people. The only problem was that they were academics. They were the elite of the country. They were not the grassroots. They were all by invitation and it was pretty disappointing.
Why do we not use our 295 MPs to go out in their constituencies and talk to their people, give them some information and get the people's opinions? Do not just go to the elite and get that answer from them.
Canadians expect foreign affairs to be a leader, to be an honest broker for dispute resolution and effective multilateralism. We should be a respected and effective middle power. Canada can make a special contribution. Let us make sure that we do make that. Let us make sure that when we say we are modernizing the whole department we really mean that. Let us live within our means. Let us be proactive and effective in showing fiscal responsibility. In that role we can add a great deal.
In looking to the 21st century a lot of good things are going to happen. As we heard this morning in the swearing in ceremony, let us talk about some of the good things.
We in foreign affairs will have the advantage because Canada has such a good reputation. Let us use that. Let us play on that. Let us make the very best of that. Let us make Canadians start feeling better about themselves as well. We tend to be shy. We
tend to be apologetic. We do not tend to be as strong as we should in the area of foreign affairs.
I felt the committee report was excellent. We worked well together. I felt the information we gathered was of high quality. I felt the report process was successful.
However, I was disappointed yesterday because I saw things like we will some day try to achieve 0.7 of GDP. The reason I have problems with that is let us face it, today and for the foreseeable future we are probably going to go to 0.3. It is not even feasible that we can maintain 0.4 where we are approximately today. Why put in 0.7? That sends the wrong message to the NGOs. It sends the wrong message to foreign governments. It does not show leadership. I feel that is incorrect. That is a bad image and that is how we are going to tarnish that image of Canadians.
I feel as well totally ignoring the CIDA problem is at the peril of the government. People are saying cut off aid. We know that is wrong. We know that is not just. We know they do not really mean that. We have to explain it to them. What are the advantages of aid? What is the advantage of CIDA? Let us make sure that it is not just a government slush fund for the minister and Prime Minister when they travel abroad. I think that is a vital part of the selling job that should be done.
As far as culture is concerned we would really like to see business get involved in that. If it is really as useful as we say it is I am sure business will want to be involved.
The reform of the international monetary system and looking at the IMF is an area that was not touched. We have again a great opportunity to show leadership this year in Halifax in June when the G-7 meets to talk about the reform. I know that we are going to deal with that in the committee. I hope it will be looked at and thought about more clearly than our foreign affairs report was.
In conclusion, as I have said we are going to support this motion. We are supporting this bill because it is a modernization. We hope it will also go much further to really get into what Canadians are thinking and to really put forward a new approach going from this century into the next one. I am sure that will make Canada an even greater country than it is today.