Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a pleasure to play a role in this debate. I must tell the House that it takes me back to 1988, when I was elected after a very controversial election that was totally based on free trade. The Progressive Conservative Party totally supported free trade. We in our party advocated it and proposed it and the Liberal candidates were all opposed to it. There were all those terrible stories about what was going to happen to our sovereignty, our water, our resources and all the gloom and doom that was going to fall on Canada because of free trade.
Here we are 12 years later and the Liberals are proposing to enhance free trade. Members will have to excuse me if I find this ironic. In December 1988 we came to the House day and night to argue the pros and cons of free trade. Into the middle of the night we argued, with the Liberals saying that free trade was going to kill Canada, that it was going to take away our sovereignty, our water, all our assets.
From that time I remember a then new member of parliament in the Liberal Party, a member who is now their federal minister of agriculture and who used to stay in the same apartment I did. We walked home at one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning. As we were walking home one night, I said I wondered what would happen if our parties switched positions on free trade. In a very prophetic manner, the now minister of agriculture said that they would just stand up and argue the other way.
That is exactly what the Liberals are doing. We have not changed our position but the Liberals have certainly changed theirs. I do not think these flip-flops help our case as a country but we should not be surprised, because in that campaign the Liberals also promised to do away with the GST, the horrible tax. Suddenly when they were in power they said that perhaps it was not so bad and doubled it. In Atlantic Canada the GST went from 7% to 15% and the Liberals now call it the HST. This is the tax that they were going to tear up, that they were going to do away with. However, that is a flip-flop and that is okay.
Then of course there was the flip-flop on the ethics counsellor. The Liberals promised, in writing, to make the counsellor independent, and just two days ago all but two Liberal members voted against their own motion, against their promise to Canadians to establish an independent ethics counsellor.
These amazing reversals hurt the image of parliamentarians and are part of the reason why people do not hold parliamentarians or politicians in general in high esteem. In fact, if people in the private sector made promises and commitments like this and did not honour them they would not survive. Somehow this party does.
Speaking of flip-flops, the Reform Party also made some pretty strong promises in their former campaigns. One of those promises was that Reform members were going to bring new decorum to the House of Commons. Of course we know what they brought to the House, and that was mariachi bands. They were going to do away with Stornoway and maybe turn it into a bingo hall, but I suggest that we check and see who the inhabitant is at Stornoway now.
The ultimate flip-flop is one which I felt personally in 1993. I was defeated in 1993 because the Conservative vote was split. The big argument then was the gold plated pension plan. Of course we know they have now flip-flopped on that and have adopted the gold plated pensions.
Yesterday their only appointed senator moved a motion that he take over the Senate opposition party and be the official opposition. This is from an Alliance Party that is totally opposed to the Senate and especially to appointed senators. Now their only appointed senator wants to take it over. It is incredible.
A lot of people talk about Brian Mulroney, what he did and what his track record was, but I want to point out that Brian Mulroney and the Conservatives said that if Canadians voted for them they would bring them free trade. Whether Canadians liked it or not is not the issue. He made a commitment and he followed through on the commitment. He said that if Canadians voted Conservative he would bring in free trade, and he did. He said that if people voted for the Conservatives he would change the manufacturers' sales tax, and he did that.
This was in contrast to the Liberals who said that if Canadians voted for them they would tear up free trade. They did not tear it up; they enhanced it. They also told Canadians to vote for them and they would do away with the GST. They did not do away with it; they doubled it. Those flip-flops and reversals of position are very harmful to all of us, and the government should try to be more consistent.
Let us get back to the opposition motion, which we as a party agree with. Perhaps we should not need the motion. Under normal terms and former times we would not need the motion. However this all falls into line with the many calls for parliamentary reform. If we could go back to former days when parliamentarians actually had a say on issues, when we had input in committees and in the House of Commons and a say on policy, then we would not need to have opposition days and probably would not have it.
We agree with the motion because we have no other input into bills. We are not against free trade at all. The Conservative Party brought free trade to the country and to the government. We do not want to stop it. We do not want to tie the hands of officials. However every member here has different challenges, different cultures and different situations. Every member of parliament should have a say in an agreement as important as the free trade agreement.
Part of the problem is simple things like committees. In former times committees were made of up members of parliament who actually had a say and had input. We could influence policy and direction. However, in all the committees with which I was involved in the last parliament they were totally an arm of the minister. The chair was decided by the minister. The subjects for discussion were determined by the minister. The votes were controlled by the ministers. The parliamentary secretary was always there to tell the Liberals how to vote and they always did exactly what they were told.
One of the Liberal members who was a former teacher said that the committee system reminded him of kindergarten, where teachers create busy work to keep the students busy. That was his vision of a committee: busy work, something to keep members of parliament busy. If members had the power to choose our chair, choose our own subjects and have free votes in committees, we could actually do a lot of good work and would not have to have opposition days like today.
I have no confidence in the Liberal Party to negotiate the free trade agreement of the Americas. First, the Liberal Party was totally against free trade. How can a party that is totally against free trade establish a concept that is viable and workable? If the party is against it, how can it do that? It creates all kinds of questions when members of a party, who were totally against the trade policy in a former life, turn around and say that everyone should stay out if it, that it should be left up to them because they will do it and do it right. This creates a lot of problems for me.
The Liberals have not been very successful at trade agreements lately. I want to bring up a couple of examples. Certainly the ban on Brazilian beef and the way that was handled will turn out to be a major embarrassment to our country and our government. For two years officials at Health Canada said that they thought there might be a problem but that they could not get information. They did not do anything about it, even though for two years they thought there might be a problem with mad cow disease potentially coming to Canada through Brazilian beef.
Strangely enough, the day after the Canadian government learned that the Brazilian government was taking the issue of the aviation industry to the WTO, it imposed a ban on Brazilian beef. For two years the Liberal government did nothing about the beef issue, but when something happened at the WTO that it did not like it brought in the ban.
Again there was no consultation with the House or with the committees. The government just brought in the very significant ban on Brazilian beef which will impact on all Canadian trade to Brazil.
There are now demonstrations all through Brazil. Ships are tied up. Ships that are on the ocean cannot unload because of the Brazilian beef ban, which was not handled properly. Proper notice was not given. Parliament was not consulted. No committees were advised. The government just did it and no questions were asked.
There either was a health risk for two years that the government did nothing about, or the ban on Brazilian beef is strictly a trade issue. However, it is an example of how not to handle a trade issue.
Another example, which has not yet happened but which is in incubation, is the softwood lumber issue. This is incredibly important for Canada. There are 337 communities where 50% of the economy, the lifeblood of the community, depends on the forestry industry. It is a critical issue yet right now the government is in limbo on it.
We do not know whether it will ask the government of the United States to renew the softwood agreement, whether it will let it go to free trade or whether the memorandum of understanding for the Atlantic provinces will be renewed, continued or what. We are in total limbo. There have been no consultations and no information. We do not know which way the government is going. Again, there has been no consultation or involvement of MPs on such a critical issue.
There will be a tremendous effort by the American industry to put countervail charges and tariffs on Canadian lumber on March 31 when the softwood lumber agreement ends, yet we have no idea what will take its place.
I have a few questions on the softwood lumber issue for the parliamentary secretary if he has the opportunity to answer them. I would like to know what the government's position is on the memorandum of understanding for Atlantic Canada. I would like to know if we are as a government trying to renew the softwood lumber agreement. I would like to know if the government will include all the parties involved, like the Maritime Lumber Bureau, in every step of the negotiations.
These are just some examples of what I call failed trade negotiations. It does not give me a lot of confidence in that group over there to negotiate a new free trade agreement of the Americas.
The Conservatives are fundamentally in favour of free trade. It was our concept in the first place. We brought it to Canada, against strong opposition at the time. We are in favour of it. However we also know that every province and every industrial sector has to be involved with the negotiations all the way through.
We are, after all, a major trading nation. Forty-six per cent of our GDP comes from exports, as opposed to countries like the United States that are at 11%. Our export trade amounts to $2.2 billion every single day. Exports affect our standard of living, our culture and our position of influence in the world. It has to be done right.
World trading blocks are changing as well. We have to keep up to date with other parts of the world like the European community which is now trading as a bloc and not country to country. It does not trade as Germany, France or Italy but as a bloc, a continent, a uniform group. We must adapt to that. That is why we support the principle of the free trade agreement of the Americas but we must be consultation with MPs, and the committee has to have information available to it and be able to influence the decision and direction.
It is not only about money and it is not only about business. The free trade agreement of the Americas will be of great concern to a lot of Canadians in a lot of areas. Many Canadians are concerned about our water, about human rights in other countries, about environmental standards and rules in other countries and about health standards. All these issues can be discussed as part of the free trade of the Americas if it is done right.
We want to make sure that is part of it. We want to make sure the committee is open to these subjects and is able to bring in witnesses that have strong opinions on all aspects of the free trade agreement. We will be pushing for that in committee. We want all subjects on the table. We want all the MPs involved with the debate as well as members of the provincial legislatures and each industrial sector.
Once the agreement is signed it cannot be changed. There are 34 countries involved. We can hardly get a decision by one government here to change, much less by 34 governments. Therefore it must be done in advance. That is why the opposition day is so valuable.
We do support free trade and we support the motion to bring the debate to the House prior to ratification.
