Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to the free trade area of the Americas. Canada has an absolutely unique opportunity next month to deal with a number of challenges to our hemisphere. Being the host, we have the opportunity to introduce and put forth creative solutions to deal with a number of the challenges. I will get to them a little later on in my speech.
Why pursue the free trade agreement? It is because free trade is good for everybody if it is fair trade. The challenge of this meeting is to ensure and convince the Canadian public, and indeed people throughout our hemisphere, that we are pursuing a fair and transparent free trade agreement: one that considers all parties and one that is prepared to work with members from across society so that we will have a trade agreement that will benefit absolutely everybody.
I want to talk about a couple of the challenges in our hemisphere. One of those is the issue of illicit drugs and the war on drugs. President Vicente Fox recently said that the war on drugs had been lost. We are losing it across our hemisphere and the countries that are really paying a price are those that are producing them.
The president of Colombia, Andres Pastrana, whom I met with last month, as well as the heads of state of Mexico, Uruguay and many others, is giving the same message: the war on drugs hurts everyone, but it hurts them more, not only the drugs but the ways to combat them.
We must decrease consumption if we are to deal with the war. We must look at our own homes if we are to deal with the problem. We could try to do what we have done before when we took the war to Colombia, buttressed up the armaments, supported the army, built up the forces and tried to cut the head off the cartels.
We did that successfully but all that happened was like a hydra: they came up in other areas. That is indeed what is happening now in Colombia where 140,000 hectares of land has been destroyed. FARC guerrillas, the ELN, the paramilitary and other drugs lords have come into the picture to produce these drugs.
They are producing them cheaper and better, such as heroin which costs $2 a gram. The war on drugs is being lost. It is almost universally accepted that we are not going to win it unless we decrease consumption at home. For the first time the Americans have admitted to this.
How do we do that? First, we have to decrease consumption by dealing with new European models that focus not only on detox and treatment but also use new medical models in ensuring that people who are drug addicted develop skills training, have jobs and live in a secure environment away from their drug environments.
Speaking personally from my professional experience, we cannot get people off drugs if they are living in an environment where drugs are abundant. We have to take them out of that. We have to give them the skills training so they will be employable in the future.
Second, we have to talk about prevention. The headstart program that was passed in the House in 1998 deals with children in the first six to eight years of life to ensure they live in a secure environment and strengthens the parent-child bond. It has been proven to decrease consumption and drug use later on in life.
On the trade issue, we have to remove both tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade as well as double taxation regimes. One of the things that Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the UN, has said, as well as countries in South and Central America where the drugs are being produced, is that these poor people who are forced to produce the drugs need something else to grow if we are going to remove the poppies and the coca. The only way to do that is to give them a chance to compete with other countries.
The House may be interested to know that the major obstacle to removing tariff barriers to enable the poor and developing countries to progress is the west. We are the ones who obstruct the ability of these developing countries to get their houses in order and improve their economies. In short, these countries do not need aid, they primarily need trade.
Under the judicial issue, we need to implement RICO amendments as they have done in the United States. Seventy-five per cent of revenues from organized bike gangs come from drugs. The way to hit them is to go after the money by implementing the RICO amendments. If the government does that, we will be able to hit them where it counts.
We need heavier and stronger penalties for those individuals who are trafficking in drugs, but we need to treat the users from a medical model. We need to hit the producers and the organized crime gangs hard, use the RICO amendments and chase after the money. Then we will go a long way toward addressing the organized crime epidemic that the Canadian Police Association said we are losing.
We also need to deal with import and export controls over chemicals used in the precursors for drugs. We were nailed by the United Nations, as were other western countries, for allowing chemicals used in the development of illicit drugs to be freely sent in amounts far in excess of what these countries could possibly use. We are allowing that and we turn a blind eye. We pretend we are lily white but we are not.
Import and export controls over the chemicals used in the production and removal of coca paste, cocaine and the production of other illicit drugs would prevent these companies and countries from using them illegally.
The third issue is environmental protection. Acid raid, air pollution and water pollution know no boundaries. We have to take a collective view and collective action against these challenges.
Regarding environmental security, in 1998 hurricane Mitch devastated Central America. There were 19,000 people killed and there was $5 billion in damage. The world has been unable to deal with the humanitarian and natural disasters.
What I propose is to build a rapid response centre somewhere, preferably in the Central America region. The centre would have non-perishable food, tenting, blankets and heavy lift capabilities as well as DART response teams and medical teams. They could be rapidly accessed using a rapid response model and brought to an area where there is a natural disaster. Time is of the essence in these disasters. If we constructed one of these areas somewhere in the Central American region, we would be able to save a lot of lives and a lot of money when these natural disasters occur.
On the issue of human security, in issues of conflict the international community has been absolutely unable to deal with conflict in a preventive way. In order to do this it requires a multilateral effort. I suggest using the international financial institutions, particularly the World Bank and the IMF as well as the Inter-American Development Bank, to press economic levers to the precursors of conflict.
This is cutting edge foreign policy. I believe our country, and indeed the House, could take a leadership role on this issue. If we present this policy on the floor of the free trade of the Americas at the end of April in Quebec City, we will start the ball rolling. We will be able to address conflict before it happens, instead of expensively trying to patch up the problems after the fact.
To my colleague from the NDP I would say this. The member's efforts to try to destroy and obstruct the meeting are nothing but destructive. The member should use the ideas and questions which are very legitimate and for which all people want answers. The member's efforts should be put toward building constructive solutions to address them. The member should talk about transparency and work with us to make sure that all agreements be brought to the House to be debated on the floor before they are passed.
On the issue of trade liberalization make sure it is fair trade, not only free trade. On the issue of transparency let us work towards that.
The issue of globalization is a way for all of us to work on good labour and environmental laws. Collectively we can work together to elevate the standard of living for all people. Surely the NDP and others will listen to the secretary general of the U.N. who said that developing countries and the poorest of the poor need free and fair trade.
