Bob Mills

[Petitions, November 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to present to Parliament a petition signed by constituents in the riding of Red Deer.

These citizens express their sentiments and great concern with respect to the aiding or abetting of suicide or active or passive euthanasia.

Therefore the petitioners humbly pray and request that Parliament ensures the present provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada prohibiting assisted suicide be enforced and that Parliament makes no changes in the law which would sanction or allow the aiding or abetting of suicide or active or passive euthanasia.

[World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act, November 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, again the member for St. Catharines raises important questions. I am sure we could work very well together in terms of what kinds of things we need to do to get business promoted.

We have a lot of people of various ethnic origins in the country and we must utilize them. In dealing with the Asia-Pacific we have a million people of Asian descent whom we can

utilize in the process and who can be an important part of what we do.

Again to go back to globalization, the EU has the advantage of being a more sophisticated market. It basically thinks nothing of knowing three or four languages and understanding much more broadly the cultures of other people. English stands one in fairly good stead in most European countries except for the eastern bloc. That will help us deal in that market.

English is pretty important in the Asia-Pacific but Mandarin is more important. That is where we can utilize Canadians of that descent to help us.

Let us face it. In the Americas there are 34 countries in the OAS and only one of them uses French. That happens to be Haiti. All the rest use Spanish or English. We must recognize the importance of those languages and the importance of using South American Canadians in that regard. It is extremely important. We need through foreign affairs to put a lot more effort into developing and utilizing Canadian citizens of those origins.

[World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act, November 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. As I mentioned, information is the key factor. The big problem has been that it is easy to trade with the U.S. Everybody knows the language there is English and the customs are somewhat the same; it is pretty easy to go down and trade there. When things get tight in U.S. trade we start looking internationally and our companies, particularly the big ones, start dealing internationally. The biggest problem has been that a lot of smaller and middle sized companies, once the U.S. market returns, go right back to the U.S. market and forget about their international interests.

I do not want to encourage government to set up more bureaucracy to try to obtain business out of the country. That is not the answer. The answer is to work with business through seminars and joint ventures to get people out there and get them the contacts. Government provides the contacts, much as Team Canada did. It opens the door and then those guys go for it. We have to get them through the door. That is all government should be doing.

It is a matter of encouragement and of helping with the technical aspects but not direct involvement or government agencies doing the work for business. That will never work. It will just become another drain on society.

[World Trade Organization Agreement Implementation Act, November 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, again it gives me pleasure to speak to Bill C-57, the enabling legislation to implement Canada's participation in the WTO. To introduce more or less some of the ideas I would like to put forward, the big thing we all have to remember in the developing world and in a country like Canada is that globalization is an important part of what is happening in the environment in which we now have to do business.

We all have to recognize that the European Union is growing, is becoming more of an entity, more of a functioning trade part of the world. It was interesting this morning in talking to the President of the Czech Republic to hear him saying that they are an associate member of the EU, how they hope to become a member and by the turn of the century how that will be a very important part of their trade in the world.

As well of course we have the Asia-Pacific and the developing tigers with all of the power and strength in trade there. Then we have the Americas as the third major trading unit. As Canadians we are making a terrible mistake if we do not realize that we must become major players in the OAS and in all that means to the developing of Canadian business and Canadian jobs.

We have had a number of people tell us about some of the negatives, some of the concerns that we will not be able to compete, that our big brother to the south will gobble us up. I do not see that as being a fear. In fact I see the WTO as opening up things so that we now are dealing with a much more level playing field, as the hon. member across the way mentioned. That playing field will become even more level and we will do better when competing with the U.S. and with other countries.

We must become very aggressive. We have an inferiority complex and have not always been as aggressive as we could be in the world of international trade. We should assure the people who have concerns that there is a review mechanism and that the dispute settlement mechanism will work much better than anything we have had up to this point. It will be an opportunity to review the issues that affect the steel industry, the beef industry and those industries that have some concerns. We should reassure them by telling them they will have the ability to question the areas of their greatest concerns.

According to this legislation and similar legislation being passed by other governments of the world, WTO members agreed to reduce or eliminate tariffs and other trade barriers. This is pretty good stuff and is the kind of thing we need going into the 21st century. It is the kind of forward looking legislation that is going to create jobs and provide Canadians with a way of life to which we have grown used. It is the only way we are going to maintain that way of life.

Before I get into the main part of my speech, I would like to quote briefly from a chapter on international trade in the Canadian foreign affairs review, of which I and other members were a part. The chapter called for building shared prosperity. I put emphasis on the word prosperity. We are threatened with losing our position, our status and our quality of life and this is a way to turn things around.

I hope the Minister of Foreign Affairs will pay particular attention to this chapter and this section. One of the statements in the chapter reads as follows: "The wealth, prosperity and well-being of all Canadians depend in a decisive fashion on international trade, on foreign investment and on financial arrangements that facilitate or hinder trade and investment". We should hang on that for a minute and think about what it means to us going into the 21st century.

It goes on to state: "In the next century the key to Canada's involvement in the global economy will be its ability to build mutually rewarding trade and investment links with the new trading giants who will be our neighbours to the east, the south and to the west". We must look far beyond our borders for trade. It is one of the most important areas for our economy and therefore legislation that deals with it clearly affects the lives of every citizen.

I am sure it is no surprise to anyone that I am a free trader and that in my previous life, before I was elected to this position, I was a businessman. I believe that the WTO presents us with a singular opportunity to gain access to many new markets.

As already mentioned by several of my esteemed colleagues in the House, some new areas which have been added under the WTO over the old GATT agreement are services, trade related investment and intellectual property. These new areas are vitally important to our future prosperity since trade and services alone account for approximately one-quarter of the total $4 trillion in global trade. What better country to provide these services around the world, banking services, all kinds of services like that, than a country like Canada.

As we know, services are the largest sector of the economies of the industrialized world and in many countries one of the fastest growing. As a result of these new rules, the OECD has estimated an increase in world trade of at least $360 billion annually to the world economy. In addition the gains for Canada are estimated at $3 billion annually when the agreement is fully phased in. This is not chicken feed. Beyond this the extension of a rules based, multilateral system through the creation of the

WTO will also expand Canada's ability to ensure that the largest world traders do not use their economic power to unilaterally pressure Canada in any trade disputes which develop.

This new dispute resolution mechanism will also increase Canada's bargaining power in our trade relationship with the U.S. While this trade relationship is a good one and has allowed Canada to become the seventh largest trading nation even though we are only 31st in population size, it is not without its problems. I am certain the WTO will help us to manage this relationship over the coming decade and will promote prosperity within both countries.

I will now switch to the more general theme of trade and its benefits for Canada. Over 20 per cent of Canadian workers depend on exports for their jobs. That is over two million jobs. In addition over 30 per cent of Canada's gross domestic product comes from exports. Last year this amounted to around $181 billion in goods and services.

Therefore it is vital that Canada aggressively promote itself throughout the world. If we do not face up to the trend of globalization, then we are all going to be in big trouble. A country like Canada cannot afford to be protectionist in the mid-1990s. Therefore it is essential that the House support Bill C-57. We just do not have the people to do anything but.

The WTO offers Canadian businesses a great opportunity to continue building sales abroad. While we also have to open our markets to others I do not see this as a fundamental problem. While there will be an adjustment period for certain industries Canadian businesses can compete with anyone in the world. Let us not have that inferiority complex that I spoke about earlier.

All we want is a fair and open international system with a level playing field. The WTO goes a long way in accomplishing this. When it comes into effect next year the WTO agreement will commit some 120 countries to gradually reducing trade barriers. This will have the long term effect of increasing world trade dramatically.

As we know any increase in world trade means more exports for Canadian business and more jobs for Canadian workers, over 11,000 for every $1 billion in new exports. This means greater prosperity for Canadian families.

If we take the figures of the Department of Finance which it claims are conservative-I hate using that word-the WTO will lead to an estimated annual gain of $3 billion. This would translate into roughly 30,000 new jobs per year for this agreement alone. The WTO will also help us to diversify our trade patterns which are currently dominated by the United States. It buys some 80 per cent of our total exports.

One of the most exciting growth markets for new Canadian trade under the WTO will be the Asia-Pacific region which within five years could represent 40 per cent of the total global consumption of exports. To date we have had some success. Japan for instance is already the second biggest trade partner and purchases more Canadian exports than the U.K., Germany and France combined.

In addition China has the fastest growing economy in the world. With its huge population it is predicted that by early in the next century China could be the second largest economy in the world. At the present time there are still some problems with China's participation in the WTO but it is not a matter of will China join, it is a matter of when will it join.

We would like to see greater trade with Latin America. I have mentioned the OAS and the importance of Canada taking a leadership role there. While we would like to see the expansion of NAFTA which has already given Canada unprecedented and preferential access to Mexico's growing market of 85 million consumers, until such time as the Americas also decide that an expanded NAFTA is in its interest the WTO will certainly be an in for Canadian businesses. This is not to say that it is unimportant for the Canadian government to push for NAFTA accession. It simply means that the WTO will help in the meantime.

As I mentioned a few minutes ago, under the WTO a new dispute settlement body will police international trade disputes and ensure that legitimate complaints about unfair trade practices get resolved according to a clearly established schedule. This dispute mechanism will likely be much more effective than the one we have under NAFTA. This should help us considerably and help to allay the fears of some of our industries.

In my work as critic for foreign affairs for the Reform Party, I have heard time and again about the importance of such a rules based multilateral system. While the WTO does not solve all of the problems which exist over international trade, it does take a giant step in the right direction.

Hopefully in the years to come Canada will play a leadership role in promoting the strengthening of this rules based multilateral system by promoting the WTO to effectively deal with the questions of trade remedies and anti-dumping actions.

Another area which the WTO will have to tackle is the whole problem of agricultural export subsidies. While the WTO does good work to promote Canadian interests, clearly a great deal remains to be done to straighten out the mess of agricultural subsidies that have developed over the years. The Reform Party would like to see the government take a constructive and

aggressive role in this respect and the WTO is a vehicle through which it can happen.

I would now like to speak to the related topic of internal trade barriers. I heard the previous speaker talk about that a little bit. It is incredibly ironic that we are making good progress in eliminating our international barriers and yet we are stuck with the barriers within Canada.

Under the current system Canada's domestic market is seriously split by provincial trade barriers. This not only affects our competitiveness internationally but it reduces our collective prosperity at home. Provincial impediments to free trade add around $6.5 billion annually to the cost of doing business. This is absolutely unacceptable. It amounts to approximately $1,000 per family.

While we have taken some steps forward, nobody has really attacked the problem as we feel it should be attacked. We would press the federal government to push harder on the provinces to eliminate these trade barriers because this is going to slow down our ability to take advantage of the WTO.

If we could eliminate barriers to trade at home it would increase the efficiency of Canadian businesses and also expand their ability to trade internationally. What better way is there to improve our position in the international marketplace? This is especially true for small and medium sized businesses which are suffering under the current system.

To conclude, Canada must aggressively promote free trade throughout the world. This means eliminating provincial trade barriers, becoming a leader in the WTO, becoming a leader in the OAS and fulfilling our international commitments.

The first goal can be accomplished by working with the provinces. The second one involves working with other countries to ensure that the new World Trade Organization operates in a way that is genuinely universal and multilateral, with the widest possible membership consistent with generally accepted standards.

It is obvious that support for the WTO and the involvement is there. We can see the prosperity it will bring for all of us. It is just a matter of providing information to people about all of the positives that this new trade agreement will provide for us.

[Budgetary Policy, November 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate much of what the member said.

Certainly consulting with constituents is what we have all been attempting to do for quite some time. Whether it is at a farmers' market or a town hall meeting all of us have heard the message. A lot of what he said is the same message we are hearing.

One thing really interests me when he talked about the underground economy. There is a sort of dream that if they thought it was fair they would all just rush in and start paying tax. I question whether that is true. I think the underground economy is huge and is much greater than what we have imagined.

I wonder what the member thinks about the single tax proposal or the flat tax proposal. The reason I ask that is does he not think that if we totally reformed the tax system and everybody felt they were being treated fairly that is how we would get back to people being willing to pay their taxes? It is not just by the cosmetic changes we are talking about.

[Budgetary Policy, November 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the less government we can have and the more we can let people be responsible for themselves, an RRSP is the way to do it. To tax something like that, one is saying: "Hey, we are not even going to let you take care of yourself". Had we stayed out of CPP back in 1965, we would have been better off if it was not going to be run like an insurance program because look what government did to it.

What we are saying is this. Encourage people to take care of themselves. The RRSPs are doing that, do not touch them. Do not raise taxes. I would be really surprised if anyone over here agreed with that.

As far as the studies in 1984 we knew we had a problem, $190 billion in debt and we said: "Fix it". Mulroney said: "I will" and then he chickened out. In 1988 he said: "Hey, I need a little more time. I just did not have enough". By then we said: "You're lying". We had an election but people believed him. In 1993 they did not believe him any more and members saw what

happened. That is what will happen to anybody else here who does not deal with that number one problem.

That is why we are losing our jobs. That is why it is not working.

[Budgetary Policy, November 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly did make reference to the Quebec problem. Maybe problem is the wrong word. I should have said concern.

Members know where we come from on that sort of issue is that basically we believe the day of two founding nations was the case back in history. Now we have 10 equal provinces. We have 12 million people in this country whose original language is not English or French. Therefore let us get on with it is the point. Let us get on and make this country Canadian.

We are Canadians. We are proud of it. We want Quebec to be part of that. We believe that grassroots Quebecers also want to be part of it but they are tired of the old line way of dealing with things. They want to deal with things now in 1994 style. That is let us deal with the problems, the jobs, the debt, the deficit, the criminal justice system. Those are the areas they want to hear about.

They do not want to hear us talking about this constitutional garble. Let us get on with it. Have the referendum. Tell the people the facts and then let us get on with it.

[Budgetary Policy, November 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly an honour to be able to speak on such an important subject. I would like briefly to go back to my involvement and interest in the subject of debt and deficit and why I became involved really in politics.

In 1984 all of us realized that this country had a major problem and that we had to deal with it. At that point we were $190 billion in debt and we had someone who promised to help us get out of that. Of course by 1988 we realized that those promises were not going to be kept and that even though we were promised with some more time something could be done, an awful lot of us said no way, and so the birth of the Reform Party.

Basically there were a number of test cases that came for where the Canadian public was at. We had the elite and the media saying that Charlottetown was the answer to a lot of our problems and the Canadian people sent their first message.

In 1993 we had another very sound second message sent which stated: "You had better deal with that debt and deficit or you know what is going to happen". The PCs suffered from that. To the Liberal's credit they have realized that is exactly where people are coming from. We must deal with this and we must do it right now.

However, when we look back to February 22 of this year that probably was the darkest day in this House when we found that nothing had changed and that nothing had happened. Now we are

into the fall and winter of 1994 and we now hear that come hell or high water we are going to deal with this debt and deficit. I hope that these are not just more words because if so the third message will come from the Canadian electorate and that will be borne out on the Liberal Party.

Three per cent of GDP by 1996 or 1997 is just not good enough. That is so minor in terms of what has to be done. People will not accept that. We have to do things to change. We have to show lower taxes so people will have the incentive to spend more money and leave their money at home. We need to downsize government dramatically. We need to help people help themselves. Certainly taxing RRSPs is not the answer to that.

We need to get government out of business. We need to stop duplication between the provinces and the federal government. We need to solve the Quebec problem, the native land claims problem. We need to show leadership in areas like the WTO and the OAS to name just a few. We need to reform the whole government starting with pensions, as we have heard so many times. We need to look at many other areas of government to reform, not the least being the Senate.

Many speakers have dealt with our zero in three plan which we have had in place for a number of years and which we have now fine tuned. Each of us as critics in our areas has been asked to specifically go after the things that affect us most.

As the foreign affairs critic I will deal just with that area and the sort of deficit reduction that we would see there. As an earlier member said, we do not have the specifics, I would like to let him know that we have a lot of specifics, certainly more than we have heard from the other side.

In talking about foreign affairs and how we would do our share as part of government to reduce, I would go back to our foreign affairs review on which we spent the last seven or eight months listening to hundreds of witnesses across the country. The strange part was that so often we spent our time dealing in an academic exercise, not dealing with any real policy and never did we talk about the kind of cost cutting that we would recommend to the minister when the time came for his call to say here are the cuts that we can make.

Instead of asking key questions like what can we afford, what should be the priorities in foreign affairs, we conducted major discussions as to whether human rights abuses should be considered as being grave, severe or serious before Canada should respond with positive measures to help.

I point out that all of the above words are synonyms and have no quantitative or qualitative differences. It was like arguing whether the movie "The Omen" was frightening, scary or horrifying. We spent our time discussing words that really were in the area of academia interesting, but in the actual area of making a difference not very.

As a result while the final report was precisely worded it did not deal with some of the key things like how we are going to cut our debt, how we are going to reduce our spending and yet still try to get the job done.

As a result we did put forward a dissenting report on the foreign affairs review. Our number one issue that we talked about was fiscal responsibility. We pointed out that the report had asked for numerous spending increases and had asked for no cuts. Not one place did we suggest a cut.

Since we found this unacceptable we went ahead with our zero in three proposal and said how can we make cuts. Out of that we came up with $1.3 billion worth of cuts that we feel are essential if we are going to balance that budget.

In this proposal we looked at a number of areas. The first one was operating expenses of government. In the area of foreign affairs and CIDA we have a number of administrative costs. There have been cuts in the past.

If you talk to the bureaucrats, they will tell you that you cannot cut any further. In the tough times we are in we have to cut further. We do not have a choice. In the unreal world, in the utopia that we often hear described around this place, we would not have to make those cuts. That utopia does not exist and those cuts are necessary. We cannot go on any longer without making those cuts.

We have to cut government to government aid programs. As many members are aware, at our recent convention held here in Ottawa we passed a resolution which asked for a tough analysis of this whole area of aid. The big thing we cannot avoid is this whole aid question as being one of a slush fund for the minister or the Prime Minister whenever they travel.

I have press releases here that I got today showing again $2 million here, $80 million there. It is like a slush fund, like when we go to a cocktail party we simply hand out a cheque just to show what good guys we are. The Canadian people are not going to accept that anymore. They want NGOs to handle the aid program. They want NGOs who are responsible and who are prepared to raise equal funds on a one to one basis. They are not prepared for 100 per cent funding any longer. They are asking for transparency and an evaluation of the programs they get involved with. That would be the way the Reform Party would approach that area.

I am not saying we would cut foreign aid. I am saying we would target it. We would look at it and try to get the best bang for the buck. We cannot be all things to all people.

The third area we might look at is the whole area of international grants. We give a lot of grants and in many cases there is no accountability for those. I could go on if I had more time to talk about those. Again, the Canadian people are asking us to evaluate those international programs and to be sure that the money is being spent in the best possible way. We are cutting money to our students but we should be looking at what we are getting for some of these international grants.

As well, we have to take a look at some of the institutions we belong to. The policy of the Canadian government has been that we have to belong to everything that is international. We belong to more organizations where we do not know what they do. When the Auditor General took a look at this three years ago he could not even find out what the aims of some of these organizations we belong to are, who their boards of directors are and what they hope to accomplish.

What I am saying is that in all areas of government, it does not matter what department, we are going to have to make some cuts. There is no question about that. We must recognize that and we must expect the ministers in each of those departments to come up with those kinds of cuts. That is our goal. That is what must be our goal. It is what we in this House must all agree on.

[Auditor General's Report, November 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Prime Minister.

When the red ink book talks about reducing the debt and deficit was it referring to Poland and Egypt or Canada? Canadians would really like to know the answer.

[Auditor General's Report, November 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's report today states that during the past number of years the Canadian government donated $3.1 billion to the Governments of Poland and Egypt to help with their debt reduction payments.

Does the foreign affairs minister agree with this sort of program for the future, considering our current financial situation?