Mr. Speaker, I would not deign to suggest that member is a thief. He voted with his colleagues to take from me the right to speak on that bill by limiting debate through time allocation. I do think that is pertinent because we are talking about an important treaty which I would like, obviously, to address.
The treaty for Canada's participation in the international civil space station ultimately is the legal culmination of a 15 year process which began in 1984.
The member for Wentworth—Burlington spoke of his enthusiasm for the human spirit. There was a great leader, probably the greatest leader of the free world in the post-war period, who in 1984 proposed this vision of an international space station. His name was President Ronald Reagan. He was the man who proposed the international space station as a way for humankind to work together across national boundaries, to co-operate by bringing together the strengths of technology to further the endeavours of human science and the expansion of man's reach into space.
I want to say how proud I am to have an opportunity to stand and speak to an initiative that was begun by that great leader and defender of freedom in this century. I would furthermore say that members of the Liberal Party mocked that great leader back in the mid-1980s when Ronald Reagan was proposing that the world reach farther into space to expand our frontiers of science, research and travel. They called it star wars when Ronald Reagan suggested that perhaps the western nations of the world should co-operate to find means of strategic defence through space, using technology like that being developed in the space station, to defend the western countries, the free countries of the world from the enormous strategic threat posed by the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the evil empire.
They mocked him, but now they stand and applaud that man's vision. I want to put that on the record, that whatever benefit comes to mankind from this kind of bold scientific venture, which we in the official opposition support, ultimately came from the vision of a man who was mocked and vilified by members opposite.
This treaty will give Canada certain opportunities. We are only funding about 2.5% of the cost of this space station. We will of course have the prominent use of the Canadarm which will be employing an entirely new generation of robotics technologies, one of the very few areas of high technology where Canada has an edge. I hope this funding will have a spin-off in terms of private sector investment and development in the high technology field.
I believe that if we in Canada really wanted to take full advantage of the private sector opportunities afforded by the development of this technology in the space station, we would create a fiscal and economic environment where those scientists and the people who want to invest in that kind of science would stay in this country. Instead what do we have? A job killing tax burden which is driving away the people who would invest, the entrepreneurs who would finance the kind of real private sector development of technology represented by the Canadarm.
Sure, we are prepared to provide seed funding for this sort of technology through government, but when it comes to allowing the private sector to take over, we end up sending those people south of the border through high taxes. It is exactly what the Prime Minister said yesterday. The millionaire Prime Minister was speaking to his group of impoverished Liberal friends who paid $350 a plate at last night's dinner. He said that productive Canadians can just leave the country if they do not like staying here.
In any event I am pleased to see that the Canadarm will be used. Canada will be able to take advantage of the monitoring of the earth, the monitoring of crop conditions, the monitoring of the environment. We will be able to measure climate and the Arctic ice pack which will assist navigation for the transportation industry. We will be engaged in various sorts of experiments relating to longevity, et cetera.
Again, I want to emphasize that it is important that parliament ratifies treaties after debate. Yesterday we had before us a treaty which we did not have a chance to debate fully. The official opposition, the only party opposing that treaty, had only four hours to debate it in principle on second reading. Now it has been shunted off to committee and the government hopes that the public will not notice.
This is important because public debate on treaties such as those in Bills C-4 and C-9 is a very important part of parliamentary accountability. That is why I was quite surprised to see the remarks of a man I know and respect, Gordon Campbell, the leader of the British Columbia Liberal Party, speaking on another treaty that was before this place. He called the closure of debate yesterday “a reprehensible abuse of democracy that is an egregious abuse of democratic process and shows flagrant contempt for all British Columbians”. He said that the limitation of debate on that treaty was “an unacceptable slap in the face of all Canadians”.
While we support Bill C-4 and this treaty, we want real debate on all treaties. We did not have it yesterday and we will demand that in the future we have that kind of debate.