Stockwell Day

[Summit Of The Americas, March 27th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I can say tonight that the Canadian Alliance will support the provinces' jurisdictions, particularly with regard to culture, as the member described.

It is important to recognize that these are very important things for a province or a state. I can say tonight that the Canadian Alliance will continue to support a province or a state on this issue because, if it is important to them, it is important to us also.

[Summit Of The Americas, March 27th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that concern which is an important one. The point the member made was that it was in a process of appeal. As in any agreement there will always be those who will try to move a particular agreement to benefit them.

I remind the member that when NAFTA was being constructed, it was recognized by the provinces of Alberta and Quebec that in some nations different areas fell under provincial jurisdiction and others under federal jurisdiction. Two areas which were identified as falling under provincial jurisdiction in Canada were labour and the environment. Therefore side accords were constructed to acknowledge that. With those side accords came the process of developing regulations and a dispute process so that when these came into conflict they could be attended to.

I appreciate the democratic concerns. With foresight in the negotiations, these types of things can be put in place to prevent somebody from trying to take over and suppress democratic rights. In this case we will hope that when the appeal is heard there will be a proper reflecting back to those side accords.

[Summit Of The Americas, March 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the special debate on the upcoming summit of the Americas. I think we all agree that it is an honour for Canada to be hosting this summit. I hope it will prove to be a milestone in the creation of a new free trade area of the Americas. The Canadian Alliance has consistently championed free trade as being in the best interests of Canadians and others.

It is well known that the Liberals once opposed a Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and NAFTA. They promised that once they were in government they would abrogate those agreements. We are happy they did not follow through with that commitment.

However, even Liberals can learn from their mistakes. Just a few weeks ago the Minister of Industry, in Davos, apologized to former Prime Minister Mulroney and acknowledged that he was right about free trade and they were wrong. We appreciate that acknowledgement. They should acknowledge that because in 1989 two way Canada-U.S. trade was $235 billion and by 1999 it had grown to $626 billion, an increase of more than 150% in 10 years.

I will be sharing my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Medicine Hat.

Far from damaging any of our identity or sovereignty, free trade helped to establish rules and procedures to clarify our trading relationship with the U.S. We would benefit from a similar approach with the rest of Latin America. Now we can build on the success of free trade and NAFTA to deepen and improve these relations with the rest of the hemisphere.

The FTAA would provide the mechanism to begin to extend some of our prosperity and the opportunity for prosperity to other countries. Therefore, we welcome these negotiations on the FTAA.

While the Liberals have learned to mouth the rhetoric of free trade, the reality is they cling to protectionism in their hearts. Some of the actions taken by the Liberals in recent months may threaten the prospect of negotiating a successful FTAA.

Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the foreign investment provisions, give protection to Canadian businesses abroad and also to foreign businesses in Canada. Under NAFTA, from 1998-99 U.S. investment in Canada increased by $15 billion to $168 billion, while Canadian investment in the U.S. jumped by $10 billion to $120 billion. Both countries have seen large increases in foreign investment and in both directions.

Most countries in the Americas actually feel that foreign investment provisions similar to those in NAFTA would be to the mutual benefit of all countries. We believe that. However, the Government of Canada appears to be leading the charge to undermine those foreign investment rules. We should not fear including chapter 11 in the FTAA when its inclusion in NAFTA has brought benefits to Canada and the United States alike in a reciprocal way.

The Minister for International Trade, who appears at times to be unsatisfied with the decisions of NAFTA tribunals in a few selective cases, has called for new side deals. Those side deals would amend the meaning of the NAFTA chapter 11 provisions. The official opposition is concerned that retrograde stand will limit free trade and deny protection for Canadian businesses operating elsewhere in the Americas, and perhaps prevent the 34 countries of the Americas from reaching a broader trade agreement. That is our concern

Another concern we have with the government's trade policy is the centralist, father Ottawa knows best approach that the federal government takes toward consultation with the provinces.

First the provinces expect the Liberal government to include them in the context of the negotiations on the free trade area of the Americas.

Contrary to the federal government of the day and its openness when the free trade agreement was negotiated with the United States some fifteen years ago, and then NAFTA after it, the Liberal government is refusing to put a formal mechanism in place for co-operation with the provinces in matters involving their participation in negotiations with other governments.

Without questioning the federal government's foreign policy jurisdiction, there is a way to have the provinces participate fully in the negotiation of international agreements and to extend the provinces' constitutional jurisdiction to the international scene.

Australia should serve as an example. In recent years, it has reviewed the international treaty and agreement negotiation process. This exercise has resulted in significant reform in order to include each of the states in the process, including through the establishment of a council of treaties comprising the Prime Minister and the provincial premiers as well, along with a representation of the provincial officials on the standing committee on treaties. With a little imagination and a lot of goodwill, a consensus may be found in which all Canadians win.

Quebec, for example, has been at the forefront in having the provinces participate in international forums and organizations. This theory is known as the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, following interventions by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, a former minister of education under Jean Lesage.

Unfortunately, Ottawa's stubbornness is what catches the eye, when we should all be busy developing a strong position in support of Quebec and all the provinces in the perspective of the free trade area of the Americas.

I know there are many other citizens, especially young Canadians, who have fears about the consequences of the FTAA and other global trade deals. I know many young people are planning to protest in the streets of Quebec during the summer. I respect the protesters' right to free speech, the right to disagree and even at times to loudly disagree. That is one of the privileges we have living in a democracy. However, I hope the government will ensure that there is law and order in the streets of Quebec and that the summit itself is not disrupted. I also hope that in doing that the government will be fair toward legitimate protesters and not attempt to use police authority to prevent political embarrassment as it appeared to have done in Vancouver during the APEC summit. We hope that can be avoided.

What concerns me most about the prospect of wide scale protest in Quebec City is that it shows that perhaps we as leaders in democratic societies have in some ways failed some of our young people. We have not been able to demonstrate to at least some of these members of the next generation that democracy, freedom of trade and freedom of markets are not just about making money for multinational corporations, but also ensuring individual freedom and holding out hope for the future.

The free market system allows a university student sitting in a college dorm to dream up a computer program that will make IBM or Microsoft tremble, and says that the law will protect these innovators against large monopolies that might try to intimidate them out of business. International trade agreements protect the intellectual property rights of entrepreneurs against companies and governments that would profit from their ideas.

In trying to expand free trade, whether in the Americas or globally, we are trying to broaden the circle of productivity and exchange so that the same right to create and innovate which we uphold for our citizens will be extended to citizens of the less developed world as well.

We want the property and the commercial rights that are enjoyed by a computer science student in St. John's or a small business person in Burlington to be extended to the citizens of Santiago, San Salvador and Bogota as well. We have to demonstrate to our young people that free trade, free markets and democracy are not about favouring the rich but that it is a noble, principled cause that enables the poor to enjoy opportunity and experience progress, prosperity and peace.

Last year when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held meetings in Prague and the Czech Republic there were protests, as there have been in other global trade and finance meetings. It was striking that most of the protesters were from western Europe and the United States. The majority were not the local Czech students. However these young people were not complacent. Hundreds of thousands of them crowded in Wenceslas Square in 1989 during the so-called velvet revolution and forced out the communist dictatorship that had ruled the country with an iron fist since the Dubcek reforms were crushed in 1968. Those young people of the Vaclav Havel generation had lived under a government that had denied free trade, free markets and free speech. The young people of Prague saw the alternative and they knew what the democratic west had to offer was a better and more principled alternative.

We as politicians and business leaders in the democratic developed countries have to learn to make not only an economic case or an intellectual case for free trade and free markets, but in fact a moral case as well that upholds the virtue of freedom. We have to show our youth that a democratic form of freedom of enterprise respects individuals, respects their individual potential and respects their freedom to grow, to achieve and to become all that they were providentially intended to be. That is why we support these initiatives and that is why we will continue to stand for these principles.

[Prime Minister, March 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, he is not giving us the documents for which we asked. The ethics counsellor did not even look at the register. He asked someone to check it and that person wrote back saying “Oops, there is something here we have to change. We will get back to you later”.

This morning, retired Justice W. D. Parker, who conducted the Sinclair Stevens inquiry, has called for an independent judicial inquiry into this. He said “A commission will make findings of fact”. No one at that time was shrieking louder for an inquiry into the Sinclair Stevens matter than these Liberals.

Will they now listen to the judge who conducted that inquiry and call for a full inquiry into Shawinigate?

[Prime Minister, March 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it came back and said that it had to make a few changes.

Two long years later, the Prime Minister finally lifted just the corner of the veil over his involvement with “Shawinigate”. He is, however, still a long way from unveiling the whole truth. The documents tabled today raise still more questions.

Is the Prime Minister going to at last get to the end of his dance of the seven veils and agree to an independent inquiry?

[Prime Minister, March 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, nothing was tabled. For two years the Prime Minister's office has been getting people to change their stories about the ownership of the shares. Last week, his office had Melissa Marcotte change her story about who owned the shares. In 1999 his lawyers got Jonas Prince to change his story. First he owned them, then he did not. Now officials at Industry Canada have had someone change the records. They will not even tell us what was on there. They said that they had to make some changes.

Will the Minister of Industry tell the House whether the golf club was in compliance with the law or not, and, if not, why did his department ask people to retroactively change those records?

[Prime Minister, March 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the ethics counsellor to check the corporate registry to see whose names were listed as shareholders. The ethics counsellor said today that he did not even look, that he had asked somebody else to take a look. Someone else took a peak and said “Oops, we have a problem here. We have to make a few changes”. However we still do not know whose names were on that document.

Yesterday, three of the his MPs would not stand up for him, five did not today and none of us will stand up and take this cover up that is going on. We will not stand for it. Where are those documents? Where are they?

[Prime Minister, March 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, for 134 years Canadians have looked to the Prime Minister's office to be an example of integrity and uprightness. Now we have the appearance of a Prime Minister's office being used to expedite a private business deal.

First, the Prime Minister denied lobbying for money for the hotel next to the golf course. Then he admitted it. He then tried to cover it up and that was wrong. Tabling a few selective documents like he did today just is not good enough for Canadians.

The Prime Minister has still not come clean. Would he immediately table all the documents that cover the transactions between 1993 and 1999, between that timeframe?

[Prime Minister, March 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, for a man who ran up a $2.5 million legal fee with Brian Mulroney, for a man who ran up a legal fee that continues with another citizen, for a man who cost us $45 million in liabilities because of another contract cancelled, he talks about asking people to do things.

Would he give us some information on the person from his office who phoned Madam Marcotte and asked her not to talk anymore about the situation? Talk about asking people not to do things. Would he give us some information on that?

[Prime Minister, March 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, he refuses to table the documents. He will not call an independent inquiry. He will not clear the air. In 1993, the Prime Minister promised to bring honesty back to government. He has betrayed this trust.

Does he not realize that his refusal to clear the air brings a cloud of darkness over the Prime Minister's office, over the government itself, over his reputation and the reputation of that high office?