Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to be standing here in this House to speak about the issue of the Canada-Panama free trade agreement. I have had the opportunity to listen to members opposite and to some of the questions that have gone through to our colleagues.
Let me start by establishing, if I might, that part of my bona fide is that I have been on the trade committee since I was first elected, and I am now in my fifth year. It has been a privilege to be on that committee, because it has been a very active committee. I will touch on that in a moment.
It is rather interesting to hear members from the other side talk about the issue of free trade as if they were the primary proponents of it, when in fact in my experience over the last four years and some, they just do not support free trade. I will grant that members opposite, without a voice vote, chose to support the Jordan free trade agreement, and I salute them for that.
However, that is a modest deal. It is an important deal for what we are going to establish in the Middle East, but it is only a piece of a much larger spectrum of what Canada is trying to do.
As I address my comments, I am not sure whether I want to address members opposite in terms of some of the things they have said or whether I want to stay specifically to the point of the text and the message I want to deliver. Perhaps I can share a bit of both for the benefit of the House.
Yesterday I was in the 10th largest city in Canada: London, Ontario. Our hon. Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development was with me, as well as the members for Elgin—Middlesex—London and London North Centre. Mr. Butters, the president and CEO of Purifics, a water treatment facility success story, when asked by a person who was not in support of free trade how he could justify it, said he would not be here were it not for free trade. He said he deals with free trade in Europe and in the United States, and it is critical to his success, his survival. It is the reason he is in business today.
I can echo those comments right across the spectrum of businesses across our great country. Why do we think the job creators of this country are the ones who support free trade? It is because they know Canada's survival is as a trading nation.
Mr. Speaker, you would know, because you seem wise, that one out of every five positions in this country is predicated on trade, and that is growing.
I find it baffling that members opposite would stand up in this House and pretend to support free trade when in fact they do not vote in favour of it. I struggle with that very deeply. I need them to search their souls.
Mr. Speaker, you might advise them accordingly to consider that, to actually think about what it means to be without free trade in this country. It is that critical.
I have a couple more things I wanted to share because I really think it is important. The member opposite, in his comments, said it is only a small deal. I suppose in some respects it is only a small deal. However, could anyone tell me how small that is to the humble potato farmer of Prince Edward Island when he has to pay a huge tariff when he delivers his potatoes, whole, and his frozen fries to Panama?
Tell me, what would my friends from P.E.I. say? If they had any respect for the humble potato, if for no other reason than that, they would want to stand up and support this free trade deal.
There is much more. In every province and every territory in this country, there are those industries that significantly benefit from free trade. I would like to touch on those a little.
Can members opposite tell me how they justify tariffs of up to 15% in Nova Scotia on fish and seafood? I cannot understand why they would want to do that. Right now paper and paper board products in Newfoundland are suffering tariffs as much as 15%, which kills jobs. The party opposite talks about creating jobs, but I am not sure about that. If it were, it would look to Alberta.
I know members opposite are challenged for some seats in Alberta. Forest products have 15% tariffs; milling products have as much as 40% tariffs. Would members opposite say this agreement is not good enough for Albertans? I would say, if they want to grow some seats in that section of the country, they might just want to say it is good for Alberta, and if it is good for Alberta, it might even be good for them, if they would get behind this and endorse it.
If members opposite were from Saskatchewan, they would say that pulses and cereals have tariff rates that range anywhere from 15% up to 40%. That is killing jobs and prevents additional job creation in the province of Saskatchewan. In Manitoba, the oil seeds and pulses, again, have tariffs of up to 15%.
When we sign this free trade agreement with Panama, almost every tariff will be eliminated. Those that are not eliminated are going to have a range of some three to five years and then they will be eliminated.
What would our friends opposite say to the pork industry? I would actually ask them, and they have consistently heard from the pork industry, which says, “Please, let us do business in Panama without the job-killing tariffs”. That is what they tell us.
I wonder what some members opposite would say to that. How can they stand up and say they support trade when in fact it has not been their history? I know, because I have sat in my chair at every meeting every week at the international trade committee, and that is not the position they take.
I have already excused Jordan, whatever excuse anyone might make about Jordan, and I have great respect for that trade agreement. However, I say it goes much more and greater and beyond that, and if they do ever want to imagine that at some point they would be at some spot other than that side of the House, they would have to come back and say trade is good for Canada and good for Canadian jobs. Frankly, I do not hear it from them. I hear a lot of rhetoric and I do not hear that.
When NDP members say it is a small deal, I would not say to these industries, companies and individual jobs in provinces and territories across this country, which are dependent on exporting to Panama, that this is just a small deal. I think that is rude, and we would never be rude in this House.
The interesting thing is that NDP members also ask what the rush is. I would like to inform the House, for those who do not know. Here is the rush. Did they know that last week the United States did sign its deal and ratified it with Panama? That automatically puts us at a significant disadvantage, because we are now behind the U.S., and we have to push this deal along. What is the rush? It was in 2008 that we started speaking about this and 2010 when we brought it back. It died in the last Parliament. We are trying to bring it back, so we can ensure that industry across this country is protected. We want to do that with every opportunity.
My colleague opposite made the comment that he would prefer to do multilaterals. This government has always said that multilaterals are good, and if Doha were around, we would support that. However, I fear that Doha is as dead as Elvis, and the problem with that is that we have to look at bilaterals and opportunities where we can.
Why are we doing CETA? That is 27 countries. That is a bilateral technically, but it is 27 countries with which we are doing business. We did EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, which is four countries: Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Iceland. That was important to them and important to us.
I do not know why members opposite cannot celebrate good news. This is good news for Canada. It is great news for Canadian jobs. If we get behind the United States in terms of ratifying these deals, good deals for Canada, then frankly it puts our workers and jobs in Canada at a huge disadvantage.
It is interesting too, because I have heard of issues like environmental and labour rights. One of the things I am very proud of is how our officials have established the negotiations they have done with Panama, as they have done with other countries. They have been very proper and very thorough, dealing with labour co-operation agreements with Panama and environmental co-operation agreements.
There are just a couple of things I would like to emphasize, because I think they bear noting. Here is what it means for labour. Members opposite, particularly in Her Majesty's official opposition, think their only role is to oppose. Maybe some day in an off moment someone will explain why they are given that title, because that is all they seem to want to do, oppose. If they would just celebrate and get on board, put their politics aside and do what is right for Canada and Canadians and for jobs in this country, I would say that is the right thing. They should get on side with that right away.
It is interesting, when I hear about the concerns members opposite talk about with respect to labour. I want to touch on this. The labour co-operation agreement we have put in place has several things: the right to freedom of association; the right to collective bargaining; the right to the abolition of child labour; the elimination of forced and compulsory labour; the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
If members opposite were so compelled that they truly believed in that—forget the potato for just a moment—they would get behind this for the sake of labour in Panama. I am glad this does good things for the great people of Panama, whether it is from the environmental standpoint, whether it is from the labour co-operation standpoint, whether it is for their ability to improve their standard of living by being able to bring goods into our country. However, what about Canada?
Who is speaking for the Canadian worker? Who is speaking for Canadian jobs? Who is speaking for Canadian businesses that want this deal? Is that not the point? The Conservative Party is speaking for Canadian jobs, and I am proud to be a member of the party that does that.
I would like to touch on a couple of other things, because we have heard of issues like money laundering and how it is rampant in Panama. I decided to pull a piece out of a very interesting publication. Panama historically had challenges with respect to money laundering. Its improvement has been so significant that it has been taken off the grey list, because it has tried very hard to improve its financial institutions. Not only that, but we have great institutions like Scotiabank, which has been in Panama since 1983, and from a corporate social responsibility has helped show the way to do business properly with financial institutions in Panama. As a result of that success, it has become the fifth largest bank in Panama. I say bravo to Scotiabank for its leadership and commitment to corporate social responsibility. We can all be very proud of that.
There are other things about the opposition to this that frustrate me. We have heard discussion earlier today about the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal is a project of some $5 billion or $6 billion. I have heard at committee and in the House that somehow that has passed us by. That is not exactly true. We had the Ambassador of Panama to Canada come to our committee a few months ago, and he said there are still huge opportunities. They are not just with that $6 billion project, but there are offshoots of that relating to infrastructure that represent some $13.2 billion of economic benefit that will be available in the market. Would I not want to give businesses like EllisDon, McKay-Cocker and M.M. Dillon out of London, Ontario, which do great international work, and all those other London companies great opportunities to do business? Why would the opposition members deny it? That is just wrong.
If members were truly committed to supporting jobs in all their communities, as I know this side is, they would say this is a deal we must get behind. Maybe they have to think of it like Jordan, that it may not be the biggest deal, but it is important to various industries in every province and territory in this country. It is truly beneficial, and we know it to be because the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, local chambers of commerce and job creators say so. If that is truly the case, it begs the question why members opposite cannot say they want to do this for the sake of their communities. I think it is the right thing for them to do. By getting behind a deal like this, they would be setting the stage for a very interesting dynamic, because Panama is the hub of Central America, which is the gateway between two major oceans and the gateway to South America.
We have done deals in Colombia and Peru, and in case there is some confusion, we deal with every country in the world in trade today. Canadian businesses deal with every country in the world today. Businesses are asking for a rules-based system so they know what happens. It is only right that businesses have an expectation that, when they do business in a foreign country, they know the consequences, the rights and the obligations. That seems to me to be fundamental. With my 30-plus years of business experience, I would say that if I wanted to do business in any country, I would want to know the rules.
Earlier I heard a member opposite say we need to do more business in the United States. By the way, I do not think any member of the House would challenge that, but we want to decrease the dependency on our business with the United States. I want to grow that business, but I want to expand it right around the world. That is why this government has been so committed to trade deals, everywhere from South America, to Jordan, to EFTA. We are now negotiating CETA, which involves the 27 countries of the European Union. We are negotiating the trans-Pacific partnership. We have recently been invited in. That involves many countries in the far east that will give us a gateway to Asia.
There is another opportunity we have not talked about. Several countries with which we already have trade, and in fact, with which we have trade agreements, but on a bilateral basis, are coming together in South America and Central America to try to establish more of that multilateral kind of concept. We support that. As long as a multilateral is not formal, I will do a bilateral agreement with every country in the world where I get a chance. That is my commitment to Canadian jobs.
I want to remind members that what we have here is a Canadian opportunity. However, we are already a little late. We cannot be late any longer. If we want to protect Canadian jobs, grow those opportunities, and protect that humble potato and everything else we do, we have an obligation to act expeditiously and as appropriately as we can to ensure that. Because Panama has already signed a deal with the United States, which is our major competitor in Panama, what we must do is put it in place as quickly as the House will allow. Then we must send it to the Senate, of course, for royal assent, as quickly as we can, for the sake of Canada, for the sake of our jobs, and to make sure that our kids have futures. Do not steal those jobs away. Give us the opportunity, give us the tools, to do that.
As I stand in my committee, we hear members who have very thoughtful views about trade with other countries, and I respect the fact that they have those views. I am surprised, after they have done as much as they can, that they would not fully embrace the concept of free trade. It is so basic. It is basic business and basic humanity. If we were to do business with a country like Panama, it would be raising that standard of living. It really would. We would also be raising our standing of living in Canada. That is what is important.
We have created some 800,000-plus jobs since the economic action plan was put in place. That was not done by accident. That happened because we have a plan, and a critical part of that plan includes putting in free trade agreements right around the world.
If we truly want to consider opening up the gateways to South America, and we already have some avenues in place, we have to do that with Panama. That will matter to Central America. That will matter to South America. It sends a message that Canada is open for business. That is the key to what we are speaking about here.
It absolutely dazzles me when members opposite do not seem to understand that. I would truly like them to take their partisanship off, and for the sake of jobs in this country, come forward, just as they did in Jordan, where they showed that they could, to say that they support trade, because look at what we did in Jordan. I hope that was not just a ruse. I hope that is not the case.
I am not a cynical guy. My Cape Breton mom said, “You've got two things in your life. You've got your name and your integrity, and you don't mess up one without messing up the other.”
I would ask the members opposite whether for the sake of Canada, for the sake of business, and for the sake of the Canadian worker, they would do as they did in Jordan and come alongside the Conservatives and let us just do this. Some things are just the right thing to do. That is fundamental.
It is a privilege for me to be on this committee, where I have an opportunity to have an opinion or two. I will apologize. My Cape Breton mother always said, “You remind me of your Cape Breton grandad. Why use 10 words when 100 can do the same thing?” I will raise my hand to say that this might be a modest fault. However, she also said, “If you don't stand for something, you fall for anything.” Therefore, I say to members opposite, do not fall for anything. Stand for the right thing. Stand for Canadian jobs. Let us make a difference in this country and let us grow it to be the greatest in the world.