Madam Speaker, before I begin my remarks on Bill S-23 I want to comment on the speech that was made by the NDP member from Winnipeg. He was asked to clarify his comments regarding Canada's agreement to participate with the American retaliation against terrorism. He referred to it as goose stepping with the United States, a clear reference to Nazism.
The member for Dewdney--Alouette and the member for Vancouver Island North are right that the Prime Minister has not responded with the due leadership Canadians want. However the Prime Minister is on his way to the United States. While he is not meeting with the president of the United States the Chamber needs to support the Prime Minister when he states that Canada will support the United States in its response to the recent terrorist acts.
It is absolutely and thoroughly irresponsible for any member of this Chamber to think it is Nazi-like behaviour. That is utterly irresponsible on the part of the member from the NDP and I would urge him to consider withdrawing that remark. Canada needs to stand united against terrorism.
We do not take pot shots at the United States by saying that we are endeavouring to rid the world of terrorism and those who would destroy the very pluralism the NDP says it was founded to protect. The hon. member dares to say that the behaviour of standing united with the forces of freedom and democracy is Nazi-like. That is intolerable and his constituents will be ashamed of those comments. It is astonishing how we can be distracted by some insufferable comments that drag the country down.
Bill S-23 is an act to amend the Customs Act and to make related amendments to other acts. I am in favour of what is contained in Bill S-23. However it does not effectively achieve its stated goal of modernizing and simplifying border operations and providing a new vision for border management and trade administration.
Members on the other side of the House might be surprised by those comments. If they read the same overview I did, they are probably wondering how one could possibly say that it does not achieve its stated goal.
Could it be that I am not in favour of simplifying border procedures or that I am opposed to reducing bureaucracy? Could it be that I am ignorant of the fact that many of the proposed changes of Canpass, EPPS, Nexus and customs self-assessment have already been successfully tested in pilot projects? Was I unaware of the fact that Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is planning to phase in the implementation of these initiatives at the end of October and that the private sector is largely in favour of them? The answer to all three questions is a very strong no.
If these were ordinary times I would be more strongly in support of this initiative but after the events of Tuesday, September 11, we are not living in ordinary times. If all the initiatives in the bill were implemented flawlessly the result would be to dramatically improve customs and immigration procedures at Canadian points of entry. Specifically it would facilitate the entry into Canada of preapproved travellers and it would reduce border waiting times for Canada bound trucks.
Bill S-23 would make it much simpler for Canadians to import goods from the United States and for Americans to visit Canada. These are both positive developments. However, unless Bill S-23 is mirrored by reciprocal legislation in the United States, the end result will be to make it easier to import U.S. goods into Canada than to import Canadian goods into the United States.
In a country whose standard of living is largely dependent on a $90 billion plus trade surplus with the United States any policy that would promote imports while discouraging exports should not be supported.
If it is easier to be based in the United States and export to Canada than it is to be based in Canada and export to the United States, businesses will choose to locate in the United States. The United States offers manufacturers lower taxes than we do and the stability of a huge 300 million person domestic market with a per capital GDP of over $31,000. We are now granting them easier access into Canada through Bill S-23.
Bill S-23, unless it is mirrored by similar legislation in the United States, gives manufacturers one more reason to pick a U.S. location over a Canadian one with tariff free, hassle free access to the markets of the other country.
If Bill S-23 were mirrored by U.S. legislation the result would be terrific for Canadian businesses. The Canada-U.S. border would be more similar to the national borders within the European Union and would give Canadians further proof that NAFTA does indeed work.
It would allow just in time manufacturing operations to span both sides of the border. This is important because just in time manufacturing is a growing part of our economy, particularly in the auto sector.
For example, the GM plant in Oshawa buys its car seats from Lear Corporation's seating plant in nearby Whitby. The Lear plant is located beside a foam manufacturing plant. When GM decides to make a blue sedan, the order for the seats is sent, usually in block orders, to Lear which then sends the orders for foam. The foam company makes the seats and ships them to GM. There is a loading dock at the GM plant right at the point of assembly where they are installed. Within an hour of the time at which GM orders the seats they are being unloaded right onto the assembly line and installed into the cars. There is no warehousing and no inventory. This is manufacturing perfection.
In this example the entire operation is based in Ontario. Bill S-23 would allow a Windsor auto plant to enter into a similar arrangement with an American supplier by drastically simplifying the importation into Canada of products shipped by reliable carriers and being imported by reliable persons.
Bill S-23 would allow an American manufacturer to enter into a just in time contract with a Canadian buyer. Unless Bill S-23 is mirrored by comparable U.S. legislation, a Canadian manufacturer would not be in a position to enter into a just in time contract with a U.S. buyer no matter how efficient the Canadian manufacturer is.
This is just one example of how Bill S-23 could potentially make the playing field uneven. Recent border shutdowns which caused a parts shortage at 10 vehicle assembly plants in southern Ontario showed how crucial free access across the Canada-U.S. border has become to the automotive sector and to our economy as a whole.
The National Post of Wednesday reported that the shutdown prompted Honda Motor Company president Hiroyuki Yoshino to suggest that Honda may build more plants in the U.S. to avoid similar future delays in the movement of parts. Honda employs 2,200 at its plant in Alliston, Ontario. We need to have policies to encourage it to expand, not retract. While Bill S-23 may make it easier for Honda to import seats from Michigan it does not make it easier for it to sell transmissions or subassemblies to the United States Honda operations in Ohio.
Unless Bill S-23 is mirrored by U.S. legislation, the message that other companies will get is to locate in the United States because they will have no trouble getting parts from U.S. suppliers and exporting their products to Canada will be a snap. Already past border simplifications have made it easier to import U.S. goods into Canada than Canadian goods into the United States.
If we surf the web we will likely find that many of the more sophisticated U.S. web merchants have GST registration numbers. They can promise overnight delivery to Canada because as long as the GST is paid and the product originates in the United States, Canada customs formalities have been simplified greatly. It is not quite as simple for people shipping to the U.S.
With the passage of Bill S-23 we would be one more step down the road to making Canada's border with the United States even more open, accessible, efficient and business friendly. We are building an autobahn into Canada but unless we encourage the United States to reciprocate by building an autobahn into the United States from Canada we will have an uneven playing field, a situation in which Canada's balance of trade with the United States would gradually decline, and with it our standard of living would also decline.
Frankly I am not confident that the United States will be building this trade autobahn any time soon. The home page of the U.S. customs service has a banner that reads “America's front line”. They do not consider it, as Canada does, a Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. They consider their border people a front line. That sounds more like a fence than an autobahn to me. After the events of September 11, I certainly cannot blame them for wanting to defend that front line. Their buildings and institutions were attacked and destroyed and their citizens murdered.
We can tell ourselves that we feel their pain and many Canadians, including me, do feel a sense of loss and outrage at what happened. However there are two basic realities. First, none of our buildings collapsed and no Canadian institution was attacked. Indeed we may take solace from the fact that most international terrorists probably could not find NDHQ, our equivalent of the Pentagon, on a map of downtown Ottawa. Second, there are reasons to suspect the possibility of a Canadian link with some of the terrorists or their supporters who caused such devastation in New York and Washington.
America was attacked and Americans want a fortress to defend itself against further attacks. The words America front line reassure Americans much more than open border with Canada.
If anyone has any doubt about that, just ask 10 Americans whether they would want an open border with Canada right now or if they would rather have a front line, as advertised on the American customs website.
Right now Americans have a sense of fear and that is the mentality which we are dealing with. In other words, while Bill S-23 opens trade from Canada to the United States, it does not do it reciprocally because mirror legislation has not been developed in the United States, and a heightened sense of security in the United States will not make it likely that such legislation will see the light of day any time soon, at least not to the extent that we would like it.
This basic reality gives us one very simple choice. We could either be within America's frontline or outside of it. If we are outside of it, I would not expect to see the U.S. congress pass mirror legislation such as Bill S-23 during my lifetime frankly.
If we are inside the front line, it makes so much sense for America to facilitate reciprocal trade with Canada, let their assembly plants be fed by competing suppliers on both sides of the border and hope that Wall Street and Washington will be working hard to create a U.S. equivalent to Bill S-23. We all know that the more efficiently the border operates, the more our collective economies will prosper. We must understand that if we see borders as ways to collect revenue, the Americans see borders as a line of defence, a crucial element in the defence of their republic.
In short, the official opposition does have amendments to this legislation. We hope that they will pass. We also hope that the government sends a clear message to the United States that Canada hopes it will announce similar legislation to Bill S-23 so we can expand free trade in a broader context much beyond what we have and do it on a level playing field. I fear that by enacting this legislation without the appropriate amendments and guidelines, the government is sending Canada down the road to an uneven playing field with trade in the United States. We want to make sure that does not happen.
