Peter Kent

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his passionate remarks and his many times restated commitments to human rights. I wonder if he could tell me how he would respond to the former Liberal justice minister and human rights champion Irwin Cotler, who said quite clearly and directly that he would advise and prefer that the keynote word in Motion No. 103 be replaced with “anti-Muslim”.

[Foreign Affairs, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, last week we learned that Canada will be supplying Kurdish forces in Iraq with long-range sniper rifles, with mortar, with anti-tank weapons, with night vision devices, along with non-lethal aid.

Why are the Liberals ignoring Ukraine's request for similar defensive weapons systems and expanded training as Russia escalates the conflict?

[Foreign Affairs, February 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the deadly surge in the Russian-backed war in eastern Ukraine continues and shows signs of intensifying. Officials in Kiev say that in recent days, at least 170 vehicles with munitions and 60 more with fuel crossed from Russia.

As the Government of Ukraine waits anxiously for the Liberals to extend Operation Unifier, senior ministers are now asking that Canada supply anti-tank and other defensive weapons to counter the Russian-sponsored offensive.

Why are the Liberals sitting on their hands?

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 13th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's economic interests in Europe are twofold. A prosperous Europe contributes to global prosperity and CETA represents a wonderful opening to a market of more than 500 million people.

Many of the remarks from our NDP colleagues focus on the uncertain voices that we hear from some quarters of the European Union, but they have very little to say about the enthusiasm from the vast majority of the EU membership, particularly in eastern Europe, where Latvia, for example, has praised CETA as the most progressive trade agreement ever negotiated by the EU.

Could my colleague speak to the fact that perhaps all members of the House should be a little less restrained and voice their enthusiasm, as our new impending European trade partners are so enthusiastically voicing their enthusiasm for CETA?

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that constituents in Thornhill, like those in Ajax, before the 2015 election showed very little interest in electoral reform, and during the committee's work over the roller coaster ride of the last year, waiting for a majority recommendation, were only conditional in hoping that there would be a referendum for whatever system was recommended.

The mood in my riding at least and from media across the country, is that of anger, disappointment, and disillusionment that the promise has been broken, among all the other promises. This broken electoral reform promise would seem to be emblematic of the way voters are feeling about the government.

It would seem from talking to those in my riding that I lost about 4% of my popular vote. It slipped down to 59% due to voter crossover to the Liberals in the last election. They are angry and disappointed, but more so are the large numbers of NDP voters who believed the government on a number of issues, electoral reform included, and the young voters. There is a strong possibility that the Liberals will see electoral revenge wreaked upon them in the 2019 election.

Some members of the government have apologized. The member for Spadina—Fort York has apologized and is taking quite a beating on Facebook. However, the government House leader and the Prime Minister have refused. I wonder if the member for Ajax would apologize to his constituents and to all Canadians on behalf of the government for breaking the promise on electoral reform.

[Foreign Affairs, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there used to be order in Canada's once-a-decade election to the UN Security Council. States in the western Europe and others group where Canada competes took turns with candidacy, but no more, and when governments take principled stands on a range of global issues, as our Conservative government did in 2010, less principled countries betray their commitments.

Now we know the Liberals have an unhealthy focus on gaining, or buying, enough votes to win, but just how much are the Liberals willing to compromise to get that seat?

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, Canada, along with every trading country in the world, has to adapt to today's globalization and trading realities.

I have a framed mallet in the den of our house that my grandfather used as a harness maker. I am not sure that he made buggy whips, but he was a harness maker, and he adapted to that trade and reality before he died. Those of our economic sectors that are challenged by globalization must do that today, and government must assist them.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, although I certainly disagree with the member's modifier of only $22 billion, we have to recognize there are certain vagaries and unpredictabilities about the global economy, the direction of global trade, and of advantages and disadvantages. The resource sector is going through a particularly bad patch now. Certainly, on the foreign affairs committee's recent visit to Europe, we found a great welcoming and recognition that Canadian products and services would soon be entering their markets, as well as pleas that the agreement ensure an equal and fair playing field of opportunities, both for our side and for our European partners' side.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, as a member of Parliament from Ontario, this agreement would eliminate virtually 98% of the tariffs on Ontario manufactured goods and services. It would open up a trading market to the largest economy in the world, the EU, for our natural resources, manufactured products, and services. It has guarantees.

My only caution is that we, on the opposition side, hope the government will ensure that those sectors of the Canadian economy most impacted by opening our markets to European exports will respect the promises it has made to guarantee those sectors are eased in through a period of adjustment. I am thinking now of the supply management sector primarily, but the other sectors as well that will have some challenges as they adapt to this new reality.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, February 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise in support of Bill C-30, an act to implement the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between Canada and the European Union and its member states and to provide for certain other measures.

As we approach the end of today's debate, may I be permitted to address the tremendous opportunities and benefits in the bill by first reflecting on the way I watched Canada change, develop, and prosper as a result of trade and unavoidable globalization in my lifetime.

As the product of an offshore union myself, I have no real memory of arriving at Pier 21 in Halifax, a babe in my mother's arms, aboard a Red Cross hospital ship from England near the end of the Second World War. In fact, my first real trade-related memories as a child here in Ottawa in the late 1940s involved the exciting arrival of Christmas oranges in our house, the mandarin oranges that arrived every year in those early years from Japan.

By the time I began elementary school, our family had moved to Medicine Hat, Alberta. My dad had been transferred from the Ottawa Citizen to become editorial page editor of the Medicine Hat News. Our food back then was local. Milk, butter, eggs, cheese, meat, and bread came from farms, butchers, and bakers barely a couple of hours away from our house, much of it delivered to our home by horse-drawn wagons. Just in passing, I was regularly detailed to collect horse droppings for our home vegetable garden, where today, of course, there is an abundance of off-the-shelf retail fertilizers.

Our shoes and clothes in the 1940s and early 1950s came mostly from Ontario and Quebec. It is worth remembering, of course, that the Canadian shoe industry was started originally by an investment made by Jean Talon in Quebec in 1688. It developed over the centuries before and after Confederation, but after peaking in 1972, the Canadian-made shoe industry went downhill because of the arrival of less expensive, cheaper foreign imports, even despite government efforts in that day to slow the tide with import tariffs.

Our T-shirts and our underwear back in the 1950s came from a great Conservative firm in Nova Scotia. I loved my Stanfield's unshrinkable, drop-bottom long underwear when winters were longer and colder than they are today, and in those days, almost all of our cars came from Detroit or the Canadian branch plants of Detroit.

By the mid-1950s, Canada's auto industry was booming with new plants, new facilities, increased employment, and the surge in export sales as Canadian manufacturers took advantage of the fact that European makers were still recovering from the war.

My dad, who was a prudent, penny-wise newspaper man, never bought a new car, but he always bought North American, carrying our growing family around southern Alberta, first in a second-hand 1947 Chevy sedan and then in another very well-used 1954 Pontiac.

While I was studying at the naval dockyard in Esquimalt in 1960 listening to the hit tunes of those days, Percy Faith's Theme from a Summer Place and Sinatra's High Hopes, I remember seeing the decommissioned World War II cruiser, HMCS Ontario being prepared to be towed to Japan for scrap. I have little doubt that some of the recycled steel from the “Big O” came back to Canada a few years later, perhaps in the form of the first Japanese auto import, the Datsun Fairlady I remember, and of course the very first Honda Civic.

As a young journalist covering Expo '67 in Montreal, I remember the record crowds of foreign visitors and heads of government, and the excitement and the talk everywhere of the many doors being opened to Canada to global trade opportunities. Those doors did eventually open, although the big trade agreements, as we know, took somewhat longer to be achieved.

I remember as a young foreign correspondent in London, England, in the early 1970s, the political debate leading up to the referendum that saw the United Kingdom join the European common market. That was followed eventually by the Maastricht agreement and the creation of the European Union, the United Kingdom's opt-out clause, and so forth.

Britons benefited from that trade agreement, but as we all know too well, the European integration progress went a little further than British voters would accept, leading to the Brexit referendum outcome last year.

Today we face new challenges, and we have seen new challenges for the U.K., for the European Union, coincidentally for the United States, for our NAFTA partners, and pretty well all of our global trading partners, which brings me to the legislation before us today.

Certainly on our side of the House, and I know on the government side, we cannot say too often that this landmark agreement is the result of years of hard work, especially by our world-class trade negotiators, who did the heavy lifting for a succession of ministers and governments.

We in the official opposition welcome the opportunity to bring this deal into force and to recognize the work of successive trade ministers, including, most recently, the member for Abbotsford and the member for University—Rosedale. I will come back to that in just a moment.

We believe passionately, in the official opposition, that Canada should strive to maximize the benefits we have as a free-trading nation and that CETA will establish trading relationships far beyond North America. Again, we cannot say too often for our listeners at home that the 28 member states of the EU represents 500 million people, and annual economic activity of almost $20 trillion. The EU is the world's largest economy and also the world's largest import market for goods. The EU's annual imports alone are worth more than Canada's total GDP.

I spent the morning with the EU delegation to Ottawa. It was interesting to catch up with the representatives of the 28 members of the EU on the ratification process. I was delighted to remark to the representative of the government of Latvia that our foreign affairs committee is just back from an eastern European tour visiting Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Latvia and to have been told by the minsters in the Latvian government that they are rushing to try to be the first member of the EU to formally ratify the agreement. They are urging us to ratify and enable implementation of the act.

I would like to say that I was very impressed a couple of months ago by the very gracious acknowledgement by the minister of trade, now the Minister of Foreign Affairs, of the hard work of her predecessor, the member for Abbotsford, in developing and advancing the CETA file in his time. Not all of my Liberal colleagues have been as generous.

If I could conclude on a positive note, and in the context of that spectacular Super Bowl victory last night, I would suggest that the member for Abbotsford might be seen as the Tom Brady character, moving the ball against great odds to the brink of victory. Again, with the greatest respect, the former minister of trade, now the foreign affairs minister, might be seen as James White, in overtime, two yards to go, plowing through the defence to carry the ball into the end zone to win the day.

In closing, CETA is a great deal for Canada. It is a great deal for Europe. I have no hesitation in committing my vote to bring this agreement into force.