Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to stand in the House to speak for the first time since coming back. It is my first speech since the first election. I was asked to make this speech before we rose for the summer, and I think, like most of us here, when we saw the topic of the bill and were asked to speak for 20 minutes on it, we wondered what in tarnation we could speak about for 20 minutes on what seemed to be an insignificant bill. However, it is not. As many of us have discovered as we have continued this deliberation, there is more and more at stake and much more to be discussed when we speak about Bill C-13.
In essence, it is a bill to make some substantial small changes to the Food and Drugs Act and a number of other agencies. One could ask, why is it so important that the government pass this legislation? As was said, it is part of a trade facilitation that took place in 2004 when there was a movement toward freer trade.
When did that begin? I heard a number of dates tossed about. I think we could go back even further. I think 1949 was the first time that the WTO began the proceedings, because it saw, after the devastation of World War II, what could happen when nations begin to fight with one another, especially in the 20th century, and the damage and horrors that could be inflicted.
They also recognized, probably from men like Adam Smith, who wrote his book The Wealth of Nations in the 1700s, the profound and good things that can come about when nations begin to trade with one another.
That is the reason, I would presume, that as we continue these talks, we talk more and more about free trade. I would not be one to say that it is without controversy. There is much controversy. We heard that here in this House. I am on the trade committee and we have done consultations across the country. We heard some dire warnings about what could take place in a free trade atmosphere. Those are the things we need to discuss here. Not only do we need to discuss them here, but we also need to understand them thoroughly so that we can take them home to our constituents so they can understand them as well. There are decisions that the Liberal government and we as a country have to make.
I am the last Conservative speaker, so I guess that makes me clean-up. I hope I do not fare like the Blue Jays and strike out, but I would love just to talk about what has happened in these last few weeks, particularly today, what we are discussing, and why it is so important.
We are very fortunate in this country to be a nation that is involved with trade. It started right from the beginning with fur traders first came to this country. Prior to them, our first nations were traders, and we continued that tradition. We were not a large people. We did not have a big population, but collectively, we were able to do some amazing things. We were also very fortunate to border the largest economic powerhouse the world has ever seen, the United States of America with its 300 million people, compared to our 33 million people. I think it is actually 330 million—a ten to one ratio. We are able to bring our goods a relatively short distance. In my case, in Chatham-Kent—Leamington, it's about 50 miles or 80 kilometres, and in Chatham-Kent—Leamington, it is very important that we have this free trade agreement.
That took place earlier, in the l990s, when the NAFTA agreement was formulated. We recognized at that time as a country that we needed to continue and to have in place rules and regulations so that we could continue to carry this out.
In Chatham-Kent—Leamington and in Windsor, and some of my colleagues are here today in the House who represent Windsor, we are involved in the auto trade industry. A lot of people do not realize this, but cars are not just made in a particular factory. Rather, they are pieced out in a number of factories. Sometimes those factories produce the product and have to bring them across to the other side of the border where there is added value. Then they come back to Chatham. They tell me that this is done many times over. Can members imagine if we did not have an agreement in place that allowed for those goods?
Canada and the United States are able to show just how well a free trade agreement can work. I do not want to digress because I only have 20 minutes, but I will say that there are some alarm bells that are going off at this particular time when we think about what is happening south of the border today. Actually, it is north of the border. Here is a little trivia for members. What is the country that is north of the border of Windsor? It is the United States. The United States has been rattling its chains and talking about rewriting NAFTA. That would have some catastrophic effects on us as a nation. Maybe we can talk about why that would happen.
The other great thing that we can be very proud of and are very fortunate to have are some incredible trade negotiators. Having had the privilege of serving on a number of committees of the House, the finance committee for four years and the trade committee for the past year, I got to meet some of those people. When we asked questions of the people who are involved in trade negotiations, they told us that we probably have the best trade negotiators in the world, people like Steve Verheul, Kirsten Hillman, and others, that marvellous team we have that has managed to do some incredible free trade agreements, such as with the Ukraine, as was mentioned here, Jordan, Colombia, South Korea, and the countries of the European Union, which is our biggest trade deal since NAFTA. Yes, there are some problems, but not on the Canadian side. It is not with respect to the negotiations that we did, which were excellent. However, there are always countries that see free trade as a threat.
I will take a little sidebar now because I want to talk about one of those countries. It was mentioned a number of times in the House. It is one of the BRIC countries. It is Brazil, which is the first letter of the BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India, China. When I travelled to Brazil a number of years ago, I saw something that was very disconcerting, something that just did not look right. What I saw was a nation that had built a protective wall around its economic borders. In so doing, it managed to produce pretty much all of the goods that it consumed. Some people would say that it is a wonderful idea and that is what we should be doing as well.
However, what happens is that there is a class of individuals, usually what we call the “one percenters”, who have the factories and produce these goods and have a captive audience. Brazil has a population of 200 million people. Then there is the class of people right below that who distribute those goods, sell those goods, or who may be in management positions. However, there is a huge underlying class of people who live in poverty because inevitably what happens when a country does not have access to trade in goods, when it is not involved in free trade and the good economic practices of competition in the workplace and the marketplace, the price begins to go up. That is precisely what happened in Brazil.
For instance, I know there are those who say that we should produce our own cars in this country. We know we cannot do that. I can say the auto manufacturers have told me that a manufacturing facility must produce at least 300,000 cars a year in order to be economically viable. We would quickly consume that in this country. In Brazil, with 200 million people, it thought it would be able to do that. Therefore, when Ford wanted to sell a car in Brazil it had to produce it there. If General Motors wanted to sell one, Brazil had to produce it. If Volkswagen wanted to, it had to be produced there as well.
As a result, if we watch the economic news, we see that Brazil is in a real tight spot. For that reason, because Brazil saw that position challenged, it put opposition against that free trade agreement.
As I said before, we are a nation of traders. I talked about our history. When we envision Canada, when we think about the map, for instance, we see these huge agricultural areas. We travelled, as I said, across the country to a number of provinces, right from the west to the end of Quebec. In my riding, for instance, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, we are number one in counties for wheats, I think for soybean, and number two for corn. I am bragging, but I think we can all brag about our ridings, especially those who come from the agricultural side. We produce tomatoes and breweries. The other thing we produce in my riding is greenhouse produce. It is a billion-dollar industry. Again, the fact that we are next door to the greatest economic power in the world gives us an opportunity to move those goods to the other side of the border.
I think I heard that in Europe the average individual consumes something like 100 pounds, or it might have been 200 pounds, of greenhouse goods. It was quite high. In Canada, it is about 20 pounds. In the United States, it is about three. Think about the opportunities. One day's drive: 200 million people, and think if those borders were closed. I think we can all come to the conclusion that trade has been good to us. It has been good to us in agriculture. It has been good to us in manufacturing.
Even in my riding, we have suffered. We definitely have taken a setback in our auto industry. Nevertheless, when we crossed Canada on our tour, we came in contact with many who were involved with agriculture. I remember the trip from Montreal to Quebec and I get excited. I am not one of these people who sits in the bus and chats about nothing; I am always looking. I saw so many new manufacturing operations, small and medium-sized manufacturing buildings in Quebec. When I talked to my Quebec colleagues, I asked them about this. They told me there are nouveau businesses that are excited about the possibilities, but they need markets. They told us that we need free trade agreements. We need a free trade agreement with Europe. We have a great trading relationship in the United States, but we have to expand that. We cannot, as somebody said, put all of our eggs in one basket. We need to be able to sell our produce to more locations. Europe is one of those agreements. The TPP is another. We have discussed that at length too.
What I want to lay out more than anything else is that the concept of free trade is a noble one. It has enriched and empowered people and brought them out of poverty. With regard to countries like Korea that were in such dire straits after the Korean war, we cannot imagine the poverty that was there, and yet the free market system lifted that country up to the world-class society it is today. That is what free trade does. That is what the free market does. That is why we have to defend it.
Are there problems? Absolutely. We are never without risk when we go on ventures, especially one as noble as the one being described. There is always risk. I believe there are risks from globalization. We must always continue to make sure that we keep our national institutions in our communities. That should not be destroyed as we move out.
Those are some of the things we heard when we crossed Canada. People are a little afraid of this. In some cases, they are very afraid of it. What we are seeing in the United States and what we saw in Britain is a result of the fact that people are fearful that they are going to lose the power they possess as a culture and as a people and that it will be shifted to another organization or another seat of power. Those are things that we need to defend and fight for in the House on a continual basis.
The concept and the reality of free trade is an excellent one. If we think about our people in the east, in the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, the first nations, all of our diversity, we are a trading people. We know this to be true and we see the difficulties that can arise when we lose that power or the rights that we have negotiated for something like the softwood lumber industry. Today, the United States is again looking at that agreement and attempting to break the agreements we have made.
Therefore, it is incumbent on us here in the House and on the government to make sure that we fight for them, so that the people in B.C. have access to wood, and that people in the Maritimes, where the Conservative caucus just visited, and Quebec, and Ontario still have those places; and so that the people in Alberta are able to sell their oil and gas and beef.
When I first came to the House, we talked about peak oil. Does anyone remember that? Is there someone here from the class of 2006? We were going to run out of oil and it was only a matter of time. We no longer talk about peak gas. As one of my colleagues mentioned, we talked about the importance of getting that gas to market and having agreements. When Alberta has such an enormous amount of gas from fracking and Japan is prepared to pay the price, it makes economic sense.
In my neck of the woods, when I was first elected, people were paying $11 a gigajoule for gas in the greenhouse industry. Today, I think it is about $4.50. Think of the ability that gives us to compete with our neighbours and in the marketplace. That is why we need to make sure that we have these agreements in place for Alberta, and for Saskatchewan with canola. That is why we need a government that has the fortitude and the strength to tell the Chinese there is a problem that needs to be straightened out, that there is too much at stake for the people of Saskatchewan to lose their canola to foreign countries that do not operate in a fair way or for Manitoba to lose out on wheat exports, as well as the pork industry and farming. In Ontario, it is auto parts manufacturing.
The Ford Motor Company announced that its platform in Brantford, I believe, will be used to ship cars to Europe when the trade agreement with Europe comes to fruition. As a matter of fact, it is going to do it before that, but it will be a much better agreement once that starts to happen. Bombardier is involved with the aerospace industry both in Ontario and Quebec, and I already mentioned the greenhouse industry. Quebec has hydroelectric power and could sell electricity. Then, of course, in the Maritimes, there is fishing and lumber. Free trade is good for Canada.
I want to finish by saying that free trade needs to be extended. We cannot stop. We need to extend it to the trans-Pacific partnership. There are 800 million people in Japan and is the third largest economy in the world. Those opportunities will escape us if we do not take the necessary steps. All of us need to be bold and vigilant to ensure that the right agreement is made in the best interests of our people. However, let us not be afraid. Let us not be afraid of free trade. We have a stronger, more diverse economy by taking goods to more people in the world, because trade is good for Canada.
