1991-03-15

Mr. David Barrett (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca) moved:: That this House calls upon the government to avoid a worsening of the social and economic hardship caused by the Canada-United States Free Hade Agreement by withdrawing from the current trade negotiations between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
He said: Madam Speaker, I regret it was necessary for my party to move this particular motion, but along with that regret is the awareness that it is absolutely essential that we go on record again against the consequences and the very principle of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, with the addition of Canada potentially sitting at the table with Mexico.
It is important to give a quick overview of what has happened as a consequence of the free trade agreement, what has happened statistically, economically, and frankly, what has happened politically. This House lost a staunch ally in the argument against the free trade agreement when the former leader of the Liberal Party stepped down and was replaced by its present leader. The Liberal Party has now softened its opposition to the free trade agreement. It has vacated its role in serious questioning about the Mexico-Canada-U.S. connection.
Reading the minority report submitted by the Liberal member on the committee one sees the typical Liberal response as the party gets closer to power. Free trade with Mexico is necessary, but not necessarily free trade. I wanted to put that on the record at the outset to prick the conscience of the Official Opposition and make it
understand it has a responsibility to participate in this House.


An hon. member:: What nonsense.


David Barrett: I know some think that party historically has no conscience. Perhaps the party could be seen that way, but I feel individual members are rankling in discomfort over the fact that they have been dragged into a very neutral position on this issue.
Now I will address my comments to the government. I do not expect the government to fall today on reflection of what I have to say, but if it was serious and really concerned about the Canadian people, it would admit in the face of overwhelming evidence that their economic policies-with the free trade agreement being the apple of its eye-are the cause and the reason for our suffering so much economic hardship in a Canadian-made recession in this country today.
I recall sitting in the committee when we had the good fortune of having the Minister for International Trade appear before it. During the questioning in the committee I, along with the member for Kitchener, asked the minister clearly: "Can the minister state specifically how many jobs have been created by the free trade agreement?" He could not name one specific job, but in his defence, in response to the member for Kitchener, he said: "Give it a year". That was early last spring. He has had the time but still has not documented one single job that has been created by the free trade agreement.


An hon. member:: Another year.


David Barrett: Another year, God save this country if we have another year in which we are allowed to follow the path of being totally taken into the United States orbit through this free trade agreement.
I recall that the Prime Minister made a statement immediately after taking office in 1984. He said, and I quote: "Give us 20 years and you will not recognize this country". This statement was incorrect, if not outright false. It has only taken from 1984 to 1991, seven years, for us to almost not recognize this country. The destruction of health care, the destruction of hospital insurance,

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the destruction of national institutions, all Liberal programs which were forced in minority governments by NDP or CCF minorities, social democratic policies that were accepted by Tories and Liberals as a means of sewing the fabric of this nation together. All of them have been at risk.
Furthermore, in other areas of a mixed economy that were developed by consensus in this country, we have seen a gradual erosion of the things that are necessary, VIA Rail, CBC, transfer payments, Petro-Canada; all long term. Every single instrument that we agreed to in a consensus with former Conservative governments and Liberal administrations, and with the support of the Canadian people, to develop an indigenous mixed economy that gave us some foundation for maintaining a Canadian identity.
What are the facts? One hundred and fifty-two thousand Canadian jobs have been lost. I want to refer specifically to what some of the proponents of the free trade agreement were telling this country in supporting the government's position: 152,000 jobs have been lost.


Mr. Crosbie:: Oh, oh.


David Barrett: I speak for myself and I wish the minister would speak for himself instead of for the President of the United States and for Carla Hills in the United States. Carla Hills tells the minister what tune to dance to. He is a very poor dancer but he makes an excellent try.


Mr. Mayer:: What a windbag.


David Barrett: That is no way to talk to the minister. I think it is shocking that the member behind the minister would call the minister a windbag. I think it is unparliamentary and I ask the member to withdraw it. I know they have internal cabinet problems but this is going too far.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: A point of order, the hon. minister.


Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker, I was referring to the hon. member who is speaking. If we unleash this kind of rhetoric on the prairies this summer, we would have the biggest wind and the biggest drought in the history of the prairies. Fortunately the wind is only going to be in the House.


David Barrett: I do not know under what part of Beauchesne that point of order is, but if the member wishes to defend himself and his cruel attack on the minister in that manner, so be it. I would never call the minister a windbag. I let the evidence stand for itself.
I want to go further by saying that in the food and beverage industry we were told we were going to have 6,400 jobs created by 1998. After two years, in that industry alone, we have lost 30,000 jobs.
Forestry employment was projected to remain constant over 10 years. In only the first two years of free trade there has been a 15 per cent decline in the number of jobs, a total of 11,000 lost. The government projected that the wood industry would grow by 2,000 jobs. After two years there has been a loss of 32,000 jobs. This goes on and on and on and still there is no explanation from the minister or the government, to all Canadians, the specific jobs that he claims has been created.
Far be it for me to quote back the minister's words, but sometimes it is necessary. I do not do this to be mean or cruel or to hurt the minister's feelings.


Mr. Milliken:: We would never suspect that.


David Barrett: I know you would not suspect that, but it is necessary sometimes to refer to Hansard, as embarrassing as it may be, to remind the ministers of some of the statements they made.
The member for Kitchener kept on persisting, in a meeting with a committee, asking the minister to produce evidence of jobs. He said: "Have any of those jobs been made public today, i.e. the number of jobs and the new investment?" "No, sir" said Mr. Shannon. Mr. Crosbie: "I have not seen any." Mr. Reimer: "How soon do you think we might see some?" Mr. Shannon: "In my view, it is probably too soon to make much sense of what there is, as I indicated to you." I then said: "Well, if you cannot tell us a list of jobs that have been created, could you make a list of the jobs that have been lost?" Others have done that, very clearly.
Your own member, Mr. Reimer, a profound, thoughtful member from Kitchener, who I last understood was a Tory, was the one who was asking these questions, not me. To insult your own member is a problem. I can take it, but to have your own member being rebuffed this way
March 15, 1991

is shocking and the Canadian people should understand this.
I want to refer to a specific statement made by a man who I have yet to meet. He was a cabinet minister in this House who, as I understand, ran afoul with some of the behaviour patterns that are expected to be normal for members of this Chamber and he came into disrepute. I refer, of course, to the hon. Sinclair Stevens. I want to refer to a statement that the former minister made since leaving politics. Remember, members, when an hon. minister makes a statement, we must take him at his word. It may put a lump in your throat, a loss of sub-electricity in the cell brains that you operate with, but you must take the statement.
Mr. Sinclair Stevens said, in early December: "Secret deal to boost the dollar. That part of the ingredient in the free trade agreement was to get the Canadian dollar up." He recounted a conversation he had with Mr. Baldrige, now departed. Of course, in speaking to Mr. Baldrige, Mr. Sinclair Stevens said that there was acknowledgement of a deal on the dollar. Mr. Baldrige is no longer alive and cannot recount his part of that conversation. The Minister of Finance has denied that any such deal took place and everybody has run from the issue. I asked the research department of the Library if we could get in touch with Mr. Baldrige and it is even outside of their ability to be able to do that.
But we have some other methods of contact around this issue beyond the use of a leftover Liberal ouija-board. What I want to refer to is the mysterious coincidence that exists about the date within which Mr. Stevens said this deal was made on the dollar, the time Mr. Stevens said Mr. Baldrige said the deal was on, and put that timeframe into what has happened to the Canadian dollar. An amazing coincidence.
In December of 1985, a conversation was confirmed to have taken place by one of the participants, Mr. Stevens. In early 1986 and up until the present time, the grasp on the value of the Canadian dollar goes up, up, up, up. There was a little spurt just before the last election when they got nervous. Maybe the Liberals would win. That faltered, and it is still going on.
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There is no rational fiscal reason why the Canadian dollar should be so high, except that it logically fits to benefit the United States in this free trade agreement. This government has not used it as a fiscal instrument to protect us.
I could not talk to Mr. Baldrige; I talked to his staff. It is very easy to do. You phone to the United States. I want to thank the Speaker for allowing us to use the telephones. I phoned the people on the committee and, lo and behold, I spoke to Mr. Franklin C. Pfeiffer, Jr. of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade. He was very vague on the question, but he said he would send me a copy of the committee hearings. So I have here the hearings before the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade of the House of Representatives, 100th Congress, Second Session, February 9, 26, 29, March 1, 11, 25 in the year of Our Lord 1988.
Throughout all of these hearings, the U. S. Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Baker, was asked about the Canadian dollar being too low because as we enter a free trade agreement it would be an impediment. What could be done to get the Canadian dollar up? What is the government's policy on getting the Canadian dollar up?
I want to tell you of a strange phenomenon. I have marked four specific areas of this report where Mr. Baker was asked by members of the committee about the Canadian dollar, and in every single instance he said to the committee member: "Mr. Member, I will talk to you privately about this issue". In four instances in front of the committee, when he answered every single question, when it came to the Canadian dollar he said: "I will talk to you privately about this deal".


An hon. member:: The deal is off.


An hon. member:: Secret deals.


David Barrett: Now, someone of a suspicious mind would say that if the government's former minister would lose her briefing papers-and I am very careful when I describe that, Madam Speaker, her briefing papers- when the government cannot produce its own documents as to its position, when Sinclair Stevens makes this serious allegation and it is brushed aside, and when it is raised in U.S. committees, they are told they will be given a private briefing by the U.S. Secretary of State,

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someone of a suspicious mind would say Sinclair Stevens knew what the hell he was talking about.
Since I have a very brief time, and that is tragic, I must now devote my time to the next step of the free trade agreement, expanding it to the Mexico connection.
This House had a committee set up under the able, capable, competent chairpersonship of the hon. member for Don Valley West. There was outstanding leadership on that committee, and profound thoughtfulness in setting up the meetings, but he was confined by a limited budget to having hearings only here in Ottawa. He was told too, and the rest of us on the committee were told that we should not worry, the government would not make a decision about participating in the Mexican talks until the committee did its work.


An hon. member:: Don Valley West.


David Barrett: Don Valley West. Well, Don Valley went west when it came to this government, given some support to the committee's chairman and the promise to the committee chairman.


An hon. member:: It has gone south.


David Barrett: Gone south is even more appropriate. One day before the committee was to start its hearings, the government announced that it was on the road toward getting going on the free trade talks.
During the course of the committee hearings, I frequently asked, politely, in deference to the skill of the committee chairman, for detailed reports done by this government before it entered on any such major undertaking on behalf of the Canadian people. We have seen not one single document produced by this government showing independent research evaluating the pros and cons of the Mexico-U.S. connection. There is a minor little paper from the Department of Science and Technology, but for a major undertaking by the Canadian government, no valid research has been tabled.
We were promised a labour studies project. It is still to be released, so the good work of that committee was for naught. We were being used as a bluff hand in a game in which the cards were already counted up. They are all in the United States hands.
One of the critical arguments we used in that debate and in this Chamber was: What is the impact of us competing in Mexico against low wages, no health or safety standards, poor environmental conditions and the minister's answer in this House? The the Prime Minister's answer is: Are we opposed to giving the opportunity for a Third World country to lift itself up?
I felt humbled by that devastating attack, but I kept it up. I thought someone in the government would have the sense and the responsibility to ask those questions before we embarked upon the free trade discussions.
Did anybody in this government ask? No. Was there an outcry from some of the backbenchers? No. Was there confusion from the Liberals? Yes. I want to refer to how the American politicians take their responsibility. Even though there is an impression left that somehow everything is on track down there, let me show how they go about these things.
I ask the minister in response if he will stand up and accuse the Americans of being anti-Third World. Here is a copy of a letter sent to the President of the United States dated March 7, 1991 signed by Mr. Lloyd Bentsen, chairman of the finance committee and Mr. Dan Rosten-kowski, chairman of the ways and means, the Congress and the Senate. I will read one paragraph alone to make the point that is necessary: "A number of members of Congress have expressed concern about the proposed extension of fast track authority, particularly as it applies to the proposed free trade agreement with Mexico. They have identified a number of legitimate concerns that in our judgment should be addressed in a meaningful way before Congress considers the extension of a fast track authority. Specific concerns include the following: the disparity between the two countries in the adequacy and the enforcement of environmental standards; health and safety standards; and workers rights."
Here is the United States of America that is expounding the new world order that this government subscribes to, questioning what is going on in these areas in Mexico and this government has not uttered a peep about the very same questions.
The reality is that the Americans are deeply concerned, as we are, about the social issues, and also the wage and working conditions that would destroy job
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opportunities for Canadian workers, men and women, from coast to coast in this country.
I know I have only one minute left in such a short timeframe and such a catalogue of material. But let me tell you this, Madam Speaker. The New Democratic Party has catalogued the devastation of the free trade agreement. It has been consistent in its opposition to the free trade agreement. It is now consistent in us not participating in talks with Mexico and is the only party on record that says: "If we should gain power, we will give the six months' notice to abrogate the treaty because it has been a betrayal of Canadian working people".


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member a question.
During the course of his comments, which of course were very high in rhetoric and short in any real factual content, he claimed that 152,000 jobs had been lost as a result of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement.
I have in my hands the document called CLC Today, December/January, 1991. It says that the CLC estimates that 226,000 jobs have been lost because of the free trade agreement, whereas the hon. gentleman is saying 152,000 jobs have been lost. This is a considerable difference: 74,000 jobs.
I am wondering why it is that the CLC are greater exaggerators even than the hon. gentleman.
I note in the document that the CLC gives us a whole list of what they say are the job losses: Albright and Wilson Americas, the phosphorus plant at Long Harbour, Newfoundland, 290 jobs gone. I happen to know, since it is in my district, that it had absolutely nothing to do with the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. It had nothing to do with marketing. It had to do with the age and the technological capacity of that plant compared to other plants they have in the world. It had no connection to the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement.
CBC in Toronto, 500 jobs. What did that have to do with the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement? Broadcasting was not covered in the agreement at all, or crown corporations. Clearwater Fine Foods in Port Mouton,
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Nova Scotia, 150 jobs listed. That plant closed because of a scarcity of fish. Then they list National Sea Products in Canso. What did that have to do with the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement? That was because of a scarcity of fish. Molson-Carling across Canada, 1,400 jobs. Beer did not come under the free trade agreement at all. I can give you more examples. VIA Rail: what did VIA Rail have to do with the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement?
Is the member admitting that this CLC document is a piece of fiction, totally inaccurate, viciously ignorant, carelessly ignorant, a Maude Barlow kind of document, the product of a mind seized by fantasy? Does he agree that this is the case and therefore has reduced his estimate by 76,000 jobs compared to this tendentious piece of fiction from the CLC? "Season's Greetings" they say from the Tory government. I say that the CLC, Madam Carr, and the rest of them should apologize for trying to foist on the people of this country such a piece of fraudulent material as they have issued.
I am glad to see the hon. gentleman is correcting them today, and I hope he will come right out and say that the CLC in its fanatical opposition to the free trade agreement has gone too far in publishing such a document.
Does the hon. gentleman agree that at least 76,000 of those jobs are purely fictional?


David Barrett: Madam Speaker, I want to thank the minister for effectively deflecting the fact that he cannot produce one single job on the record, not the CLC, not Dave Barrett, but on the record showing that it has been created by the free trade agreement.
As to the document, I don't have to defend the CLC. I ask the minister to attack my figures. Furthermore, I have not brought in the business community's figures that it uses in support of this government: the Canadian Conference of Businessmen, or that other ragtag outfit, or the banks that shell out money for this government, the bank that has admitted that it has given money to this government because it is more to the specific policy. If you want to get in the trades on support, I will tell you this -and I say this proudly-that I would rather have the working men and women of Canada supporting my position than the right-wing business community of this country.

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I want to repeat my question. Why is it that non-captives of the CLC-Mr. Bentsen, who was a vice-presidential candidate, and Mr. Rostenkowski-are moved to write to their President asking for guarantees while this government has even denied that such requests are necessary? Why is it that an American senator and American members of the House of Representatives have the courage to raise these questions, but when they are raised in this House they are attacked by that minister who views all criticism as a personal insult?
I have never attempted to insult the minister personally. His own record does that better than anything I can do. I have been a sympathetic friend of the minister. I have been waiting for him to come to his senses, but I think it is now beyond his ken. There is a call for that member to go back to Newfoundland and lead the Tory party. They are already in oblivion. What possible help could he give them in that course?
The questions are clearly focused; the questions are clearly stated.
This government has not produced research. It has not produced documents showing that all the warm bodies they have in bureaucracies have put their mind to this question, but they have spent $25 million on the Spicer commission, on airy-fairy searches for basic problems of this country which have more to do with economics than anything else.
The greatest threat to the province of Quebec is not the internal divisions in this Chamber, but the free trade agreement which will ultimately lead to the loss of its economic sovereignty. I challenge the members from Quebec and the rest of Canada to understand that the greatest threat to the survival of any potential nation- sovereign or member of a confederation-is the economic sovereignty they can determine within their own borders. When that is lost you do not have a country, and this country is becoming a lap poodle to the United States and is losing its great heritage as an independent sovereign nation with some control of its own economic destiny.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca on his witty speech in the House today. I agree it is a shame he did not get more time to speak to us this morning. I think he
would be great on the Improv programs we see on U.S. TV or on the Johnny Carson Show. It is a relief to have someone who can start the morning with so much humour and wake up the Tories with the kind of comments he just made.
I admire his sense of humour, and I admire him for what he has done for the parliamentary channel. I am sure that this morning, everybody in Canada is saying: Let's get rid of the Spicer Commission and ask Barrett to tour the country and talk to us about Third World countries and Tories, and especially about the excellent programs introduced by the Liberal Party when it was in power.
I like the hon. member's sense of humour and I admire him for it. It is really too bad that his opposite number in this respect, the minister responsible for free trade agreements with the most powerful country in the world or one of the Third World countries- The hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca never said which of the three was from the Third World. He missed an opportunity there!
So again, my congratulations, and it would be nice to hear some more from Mr. Barrett and enjoy his humour for the rest of the morning.


David Barrett: Madam Speaker, I deliberately focused in seriousness on the government's position in response to questions in this House about the Third World. I was shocked, and still am, at the facetiousness with which the government answered those valid questions about the impact on our economy of having a low-wage partner in a free trade agreement.
I want to point out again that regardless of the party you belong to, it is imperative that we protect and defend those people who send us to this Chamber. It is not good enough to put ourselves in a position without asking serious questions about it. It is not good enough to place ourselves in a position of being at the mercy of a low-wage partner, particularly when the other partner is asking these questions and we are not. I am ashamed of the government.


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure as always to have the opportunity to speak in this House, even though the motion before us is a silly and jejune motion. It calls upon the government to avoid a worsening of the social and economic hardship caused by the Canada-U.S. Free

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Trade Agreement. There has not been any social or economic hardship caused by that agreement.
It then goes on to say: "by withdrawing from the current trade negotiations between the United States, Mexico and Canada", when there are no current trade negotiations between the three. This is a matter which is before the U.S. Congress now to decide whether or not it will give fast track authority for such a negotiation. No negotiations are yet started.
I want to correct something the hon. member who introduced the motion said. He said he was tiying to prick the conscience of the Official Opposition. Well, how can you prick what isn't there? To prick something you first have to find it. I have never noticed, and I do not think anyone else in this Chamber has ever noticed the Official Opposition having a conscience. He started out already in attempting to do the impossible.


David Barrett: When I knew you, you were a Liberal.


John Carnell Crosbie: That is why I happen to know they have no conscience. That is why I left them, to look for a party that had a conscience.
The motion is basically about free trade. I want to give a quotation from Thomas Paine in 1791. Two hundred years ago in The Rights of Man he said:
The prosperity of any commercial nation is regulated by the
prosperity of the rest. If they are poor, she cannot be rich, and her
condition, be it what it may, is an index of the height of the
commercial trade in other nations.
In other words, we are all dependent upon one another if we are to be prosperous in this world. That was recognized even 200 years ago. We cannot be prosperous if the people who surround us are poor.
That quotation alone completely knocks on its head the feeble attempts of the New Democratic Party to oppose a negotiation between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. We all know that Mexico is not as wealthy a nation as ours at the present time, but does that mean that we should, even in our own self-interest, refuse to trade with it, refuse to have anything to do with it because it suffers from lower wages at the moment than we do?
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Is that the New Democratic Party philosophy, the party that used to be the party of support for the undeveloped countries of the world, for those who had been dispossessed, for those struggling to make their way up?
Now they are members of the party of the status quo, because they bob their heads whenever the organized labour movement of Canada tells them to bob their heads. They have deserted their principles. They no longer want to help the dispossessed, the poor of the world; they just want to help the fat cats in the Canadian Labour Congress to try to maintain a position where there must be walls of protection to keep them in their present status, and to hell with the rest of the world.
That is not the philosophy of our party. The NDP supports the status quo. We support change that is needed for the future together with the business community, which today are the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries of our society are the business and industrial people who realize that we have to compete with the world and change.
I would now like to give another quotation. I am raising this debate to too high a level for these hon. gentlemen to understand. Here is what T. B. Macaulay, the famous historian, said in 1824 in Mitford's History of Greece:
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can
confer on a people, is, in almost every country, unpopular.
That is what Macaulay observed in 1824, and it is correct. Any government that tries to lead a country into freer trade must know it is not a popular move to make, because it is a longer term move. It is something that is going to be good for the country in the longer term. The ignorant and those who do not want to see and those who are beholden and dependent upon certain selfish interests will oppose it and make it appear that any change in the status quo is going to somehow be damaging to the ordinary person. That is why it is not popular.
It only becomes popular when you stick to your guns and keep explaining what the benefits of free trade or freer trade are, which we intend to do. We have all kinds of independent opinion that supports what we have been doing.

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For example, the national financial columnist, Diane Francis, said in Maclean's for November 12, 1990:
The lingering debate over free trade is irrelevant, as is the battle against the goods and services tax. Opponents of both are practitioners of ostrich economics, the tendency of persons with a low economic IQ to simply stick their heads in the sand. The GST and free trade initiatives, whether bilateral, trilateral or multilateral, are essential policies in sync with the irreversible post-war trend towards a global economy.
She goes on to say:
Free trade is profound historical trend which is as immutable as gravity. The debate of the 1990s is not whether free trade is a good idea or not: the debate should centre on how to adjust, how to improve strengths, cushion dislocations and find new niches.
Canada is already so far along in this process of interdependence that our standard of living and future depend strictly upon how astute and non-protectionist we are. Up to one third of Canadian jobs are directly or indirectly dependent upon trade with other countries.
Then she points out that we collectively owe more than $230 billion offshore, giving us the dubious distinction of having one of the highest levels of foreign indebtedness per capita in the industrialized world, almost $9,000 per person. She says:
Canada's challenge is to figure out how to earn more hard currency from foreigners and how to motivate workers to work harder. If not, our standard of living, already on the decline, will fall further in the 1990s. Of course, people do not want to hear such messages and would rather vote for politicians who espouse ostrich economics.
The largest ostrich of them all just spoke ahead of me. She concludes:
The world hurtles towards one global economy, whether we like it or not.
The NDP is like King Canute telling the tide to stay out, defying the tide. King Canute Barrett sits there. The world is hurtling toward one global economy and poor little fat Dave saying: "No, no, no, we are not going to hurtle toward one global economy.* Here in Canada somehow we are going to keep things all together. We are going to depend on our own spavines in a market of 26 million people and we are going to protect ourselves into prosperity. Whereas, what would really happen is we would obliterate ourselves altogether.
The world hurtles toward one global economy whether the NDP likes or not. You are not even an infinitesimal speck on the beach with the tide rolling in over you.
That is what Diane Francis said. On January 14, 1991, Diane Francis said this in Maclean's as well:
Critics of the free trade deal are intellectually dishonest. The facts
show that Canadians have prospered under the agreement.
You will have to read the article. I do not have the time to read this whole article today. When we look at some impartial observer, that is the kind of report we get, not the fearmongering and fiction that the New Democratic Party imparts or the Liberal party spreads.
Part of the Liberal Party is inculcated by a bacillus, a bacilli that has come from the New Democratic Party. It controls your foreign policy section. It used to control your trade section. Now you have a trade critic who is fighting against this infection from the NDP, tiying to adopt some sensible trade policy. There are even Liberals who have supported the U.S.-Canada-Mexico negotiations. Former leadership candidate, Sheila Copps, said that Canada has to protect its interests.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


John Carnell Crosbie: "I am not sure that we should become a negotiating partner, but I think we should make sure we know what is going on". That member at least wants to know what is going on. She says: "If we are not anywhere near the table, clearly we are not going to be in a position to monitor that". This is a woman showing a modicum of common sense for the first time in her history.
Then metro Toronto MP Kaplan, we are sorry to hear he is not going to run in the next election. He did not have a chance anyway. He said: "Canada should try and get the largest role that we can in the talks to protect our interests".
They are in disagreement with the former honourable Mr. Axworthy. Perhaps he is still an honourable; hon. member Axworthy, now the foreign policy critic who turns faint when he hears anyone mention the word U.S. We are not even to mention the word U.S.
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To come back to the main theme of my remarks, we can look at practically any independent study. Here is a study done by the C. D. Howe Institute, Competitiveness in the 1990s. What does it recommend?
It recommends the following:
Recommendation 2: Canada should be a full and active participant in the U.S.-Mexico free trade negotiations.
Recommendation 3: Canada should continue to press for the enhancement of secure access and bilateral trade negotiations with the United States under the FTA.
I do not have time to refer to more of its statements. These are independent research bodies, not long-winded labour politicians like poor Bob White, Shirley Carr and this crew who think that somehow they have got to kowtow to their followers and pretend that somehow Canada can protect itself and cut itself off from the rest of the world.
In The Gazette of Montreal for February 27: "Free trade agreement pays off for Canada", a report of a speech by Ambassador Derek Burney, who sets out-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


John Carnell Crosbie: Oh, they laugh. Whenever they hear about facts they laugh in the NDP. They do not know how to deal with facts. Here is one of the facts that Derek Burney put forward:
Fact number three is that Canada's trade performance is one bright spot in an otherwise sombre economic outlook. The OECD has pointed out that "Canada's strength in international trade has cushioned the country from a more debilitating recession. The free trade agreement, far from opening the floodgates to job-destroying U.S. imports, is presiding over a substantial increase in our trade surplus with the United States -$17.4 billion for 1990 as opposed to $14.2 billion in 1988. The value of total Canadian exports to the United States has increased nearly $8 billion, or 7.5 per cent, since 1988 to a total of $110.3 billion in 1990."
That just happens to be a fact. How could this be if Canada has been devastated and we have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs? How is it that we are exporting more to the United States of America than we ever did if we have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs due to this agreement?
They never deal with these facts. We never hear them deal with the facts. All we have is fiction from Shirley
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Carr, Bob White and the seven dwarfs, and all the rest of them. Somebody should deal with these facts:
Fact number four is that the investment picture in Canada is even more impressive-we have moved from a net direct investment outflow of $7.3 billion in 1988 to a net inflow of almost $1 billion in the first three quarters of 1990-a remarkable turnaround-since the free trade agreement -
What creates jobs? Investment creates jobs. Instead of having an outflow of $7.3 billion as we had in 1988, losing jobs, we had a net inflow of $1 billion in 1990 helping to create jobs here in Canada. These are facts, but we never hear facts dealt with by the hon. personages opposite.
Then let us look at the Canada West Foundation report that just came out in February. This studies objectively the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Under conclusions it states:
Contrary to prevailing perception-Canada has significantly expanded its exports of end products by a net increase of over $4.0 billion while imports of end products from the U.S. declined by $600 million.
Despite poor conditions economically there are increases in "exports of machinery, equipment, electronics, aerospace and others". We made our "gains in high-tech and capital-intensive industries rather than selling off our resources".
That is what the Canada West Foundation reported. It has no bias. It is not controlled by any political party. It is just doing a job for the west, an independent job, and those are some of the conclusions that it has come to.
If I had the time I could go through and show that conclusion after conclusion knocks the NDP on the head and the silly statements that it makes. The Maude Barlow party, any party that spouts the same nonsense as Maude Barlow, my God, should be ashamed of itself. It should go hide its head.
Looking at the Canada West Foundation report, the interesting things about these patterns, it states on page 7:
- provincial-U.S. trade in the West and Atlantic regions and to a lesser extent in Quebec, has grown substantially higher than Ontario-U.S. trade which dominated Canada-U.S. trade in the post WWII period.
I do not have the time to read it all to you, but you have not got the patience to listen to it either.

March 15, 1991
Supply
The Royal Bank of Canada Econoscope, February 1991, concludes that the FTA has been very beneficial for Canada and that we should enter into a Canada- U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement.
Dr. Neufeld, an executive vice-president of the Royal Bank, made a speech in Washington to the National Economists Club and concluded after two years of the Canada-U.S. FTA that:
Our own study of the functioning of the Canada-U.S. Free Hade Agreement released today finds that the current recession has little to do with the Agreement; that some sectors are benefiting from the Agreement; that the dispute settling mechanism has contributed to a more orderly review of trade disputes; that precise reasons for some plant closings in Canada and shifts to the U.S. are not clear; that there are areas where Canada and the U.S. must take action to improve the Agreement; but that major policy difficulties in Canada lie not with trade but with fiscal deficits, cost increases, interprovincial trade barriers, federal-provincial tax system disharmony, and low productivity. So I see nothing in the functioning of the Canada-U.S. FTA so far that would argue against further evolution in North American Free Hade.
These are the remarks of an outside observer, not a politician out to appeal to the prejudices and the emotions of people they should be better serving by giving them the facts and the truth.
On page 4 of the same speech:
The North American free trade area would encompass a population of 360 million, which is larger than the European Community and three times as large as the lapanese domestic market. It would constitute combining the labour abundant and capital scarce region of Mexico with the technologically advanced industry and demographically aging population of Canada and the U.S. It is a strategic fit.
Read the serious material and see why we are doing it. We are not doing this because we think it is going to be instantly popular in Canada. We know we have a whole series of vicious people who do not care about the future of Canada who are going to be attacking this looking for short-term gain. Any person in this country who studies this objectively, knowledgeable people, commend the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. They recommend that we go on to negotiate a North American free trade agreement.
The hon. NDP member talked about jobs, jobs, jobs. I can give him examples of tens of thousands of jobs. Are
you listening? No, you are not listening; you are gazing blankly into the space above your head.
Here is one example of jobs. "Windsor to get high-tech steel mill. International group, led by Dofasco Steel, plans a $240 million investment. One thousand new jobs by 1993." If you want jobs, brother, I will show you jobs. "Bayer to invest up to $165 million in Canada after a Polysar purchase". On and on it goes with examples of expansions and new investments in Canada.
I recommend the Royal Bank of Canada Econoscope study.
Diane Francis says: "Free trade gets a ringing endorsement and that is the Canada way". "Trade deal benefits Manitoba", a report says. Then we have an analysis of the Mexico negotiations by Fred Blaser in The Financial Post: "Canada will give as good as we get."
The experts know that we can compete with Mexico. The experts know that low wages do not determine whether you are competitive or not. They know it depends on science and technology. They know it depends on transportation systems and education systems and a whole set of other factors, not just wages which are less than 20 per cent of the cost of goods normally.
Because I do not have a huge amount of time left, here is another thing about jobs. Proctor and Gamble gives free trade thumbs up:
We've become substantially more efficient in the last two years
and clearly we now have more jobs in our Canadian plants than we
would have had without the agreement.
After two years Mr. Dave Elliot, an executive at Proctor and Gamble, in the December 21, 1990 Evening Telegram, says: "We have become more efficient and clearly we now have more jobs in our Canadian plants than we would have had without the agreement".
Is the hon. member listening to that? Does anybody see the hon. member listening? Has he heard a word?


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Unfortunately I must interrupt the hon. minister. The time has expired.
It being 11 o'clock a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 35, the House will now proceed to Statements by Members pursuant to Standing Order 31.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31 [Translation]
Mr. Jacques Vien (Laurentides):: Madam Speaker, next Sunday I will be taking part in a telethon to help Mr. Robert Corbeil, a resident of the municipality of Mont-Rolland in my riding. After Mr. Corbeil became a quadraplegic as result of an unfortunate accident, residents of Mont-Rolland started a campaign to help Mr. Corbeil and his family.
Madam Speaker, today everybody in Laurentides knows about Mr. Corbeil's case. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all my constituents who have shown an incredible spirit of community and compassion by getting involved in various projects to help Mr. Corbeil. The telethon is one of those projects, and I urge all residents to give generously.


FARM INCOME PROTECTION ACT
Mr. Lyle Vanclief (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Madam Speaker, the more we hear from farm organizations about the Farm Income Protection Act, the more we are being told that this legislation is not completely what farm groups were expecting and promised.
Farm leaders who thought they were being consulted expressed shock and disappointment that this legislation does not contain measures enshrining the producer's share of premiums, and there is no reference in the bill to the principle of equity for producers of different commodities in different regions of Canada.
We on this side of the House join the agrifood industry in Canada in calling upon the government to make crucial amendments to the bill to protect in the long run a vital sector of the Canadian economy, that of the agrifood industry.


CONSUMER AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Madam Speaker, yesterday in the Journal de Montreal, we read: Blais:
According to Pierre Blais,
Edmonston has been engaging in misleading advertising.
It is false to say that the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs supports corporations at the expense of consumers.
According to the newspaper:
The member for Bellechasse wanted to remind Mr. Edmonston, the NDP consumer critic, that he often asks CCC to intervene in matters that are not under the department's jurisdiction. He mentioned gas prices and explained that setting gas prices was not the responsibility of CCC. Furthermore, hidden guarantees for automobiles were a provincial, not a federal responsibility.
Madam Speaker, the article goes on to say:
The Minister explained that in many consumer areas, responsibility was shared by both levels of government, but considering the present constitutional context, the provinces would not look kindly on the federal government trespassing in an area for which they had responsibility.
This is a clear message to the NDP.


FISHERIES
Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-TVinity-Conception):: Madam Speaker, once again on behalf of Atlantic Canadians, especially Newfoundlanders, I want to register deep concern and outright protest over the destructive overfishing by the European Community vessels.
Figures just released show that for 1990, European Community vessels are estimated to have caught 76,000 tonnes of groundfish stocks. This is five times over the quota of 15,377 tonnes set by the members of North Atlantic Fisheries Organization.
In addition, despite a NAPO moratorium on the harvesting of northern cod, the European Community set a unilateral quota of 32,000 tonnes. It is clear that in 1990, as they have in the past six years, foreign vessels have disregarded the quotas they set for themselves, and more importantly, they are getting away with it.

March 15, 1991
The people in the fishing industry are fed up with statement after statement. It is imperative that this government develop a system with teeth to end the overfishing and to protect the livelihoods of fisherper-sons in the Atlantic region.


CHILD CARE
Ms. Joy Langan (Mission -Coquitlam):: Madam Speaker, a comprehensive child care plan was the promise of the Tories on the campaign trail in 1984 and again in 1988.
Child care groups across this country anticipated, after almost seven years, that this government would be announcing child care initiatives in this budget. Nothing. There is no new money for child care, in spite of a promise in the 1984 election, in spite of a promise in the 1988 election and in spite of a number of promises in this House by the Minister of National Health and Welfare in response to my questions.
He said that in the life of this Parliament we would have child care. The same minister said that we should look at child care as an economic and a social instrument.
What did Canadian families get? They got a response from the Minister of Health and Welfare saying that the money would have to come from a combination of federal financial reserves and reallocation of other program commitments.
Is this the government's commitment to affordable, accessible child care? Is this what working families can expect; we will pay for child care with money we steal from other social programs? Some promise.


INTERNATIONAL CONSUMERS' RIGHTS DAY
Mr. Jean-Guy Guilbault (Drummond):: Madam Speaker, March 15 has been declared International Consumers' Rights Day, under the theme: protect consumer rights.
Founded in 1960 by five groups from the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands, today the International Organization of Consumers Unions has 181 member organizations in 64 countries, on all continents. The organization tries to find solutions to problems, international in scope, relating to consumer products such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides and tobacco.
The message of the International Organization of Consumers Unions is especially important for developing countries and countries in Eastern Europe that are now setting up market economies in which consumers have a major role to play.
In Canada, Madam Speaker, consumers are protected by framework legislation, and especially by a market that is sensitive to consumer needs.


1848 REVOLUTION


Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough West):: [Editor's Note: Member spoke in Hungarian, translated as follows:]


REFORM PARTY
Mr. Larry Schneider (Regina-Wascana):: Madam Speaker, I stand here today to address the issue of the Reform Party and their agricultural policy, or rather their lack thereof.
My concern is that Mr. Manning and his splinter reformers have not the slightest idea of the complexities of the agrifood industry. Mr. Manning admits he is a management consultant from Edmonton with no connection to the soil.
Uncertain about the complexities of the farm situation, Mr. Manning acknowledges that his agricultural ideas might not work. Mr. Manning has refused three invitations to appear before the finance committee and perhaps if he were to receive an invitation to appear before the Standing Committee on Agriculture, he likely would refuse that invitation as well.
What are his ideas? Nobody, including Mr. Manning, knows. If Mr. Manning and the Reform Party hope to be a credible force in the next federal election, someone had better come up with a solid agricultural policy, or any policy for that matter, one that the agrifood producers can look at and closely evaluate on its merits or lack thereof.
Therefore, I ask: where is your agriculture policy, Mr. Manning? Where is the wheat? Mr. Manning, where is the beef?


FOREIGN AID
Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, the Minister of Finance is making the world's poor shoulder the burden of his economic mismanagement.
After cuts in 1989 and a 5 per cent cap in 1990, the minister decided in the February budget to reduce the cap on overseas development assistance, to 3 per cent in 1992-93 and following years. Although this will save Canada $262 million next year alone, the results for the Third World will be harsh.
In its recent review of member's foreign aid programs, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development expressed, "regret" at the "significant decline in Canadian overseas development assistance". The OECD report concluded that: "Canada's real commitment to its announced aid target must be in question."
Tory times are not only hard times for Canadians, they are also hard times for the poor and impoverished of this world who look to Canada for her humanitarian help and leadership. I urge the minister to read the OECD report and significantly increase, not cap, Canada's ODA.


BANK OF CANADA
Mr. Iain Angus (Thunder Bay-Atikokan):: Madam Speaker, Canadians are fascinated by the new Crow rate. The Governor of the Bank of Canada preaches wage restraint as a miracle cure to fight inflation, but in practice he accepts yet another generous salary increase from the Conservative government on the day before wages are frozen for secretaries, clerks, and other federal employees.
Crow's salary has increased 69 per cent over five years. Crow says high salaries at the bank are necessary to retain staff. Then why is it that Crow's counterpart in the U.S. gets paid $100,000 less than Governor Crow, and the U.S. chairman is doing a much better job of earning his salary too. Unemployment in the U.S. is just 6.5 per cent, compared to the 10.2 per cent which Wilson and Crow have forced on Canadians. The U.S. federal bank rate is 4 percentage points lower than in Canada.
Canadians can neither afford the hypocrisy nor the destructive economic policies of this disastrous duo, Wilson and Crow.
Madam Speaker, the Governor's pay rate is one Crow benefit that Canadians would be happy to see cut.


POTATO INDUSTRY
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Madam Speaker, the outbreak of the PVY-N potato virus has caused much concern in Atlantic Canada.

March 15, 1991
Oral Questions
The federal and provincial governments and the Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick potato boards have just announced the implementation of an eradication plan that will eliminate PVY-N and ensure that the normal trade patterns can be resumed.
In addition, Agriculture Canada has begun negotiations with the United States and has already succeeded in reducing U.S. import restrictions.
Madam Speaker, as I have indicated to the House in the past, the Canadian agricultural industry depends upon the export of top quality crops not only to the United States but to the world.
By having the various levels of government and industry work together, we can ensure the eradication of this virus and the continued success of Canadian agriculture.


MONTREAL'S ECONOMY
Mr. Marcel Prud'homme (Saint-Denis):: Madam Speaker, Montreal-said the late Jean Marchand-is the motor of Quebec's economy. Montreal, my city, is crying our for help because of the disastrous impact of unemployment. Montreal has broken the gloomy record set by St. John's, Newfoundland, the unemployment champion. According to an article that appeared in La Presse on Thursday, March 14, the fact that 180,000 workers are unemployed does not seem to impress the minister responsible for Montreal and especially for East Montreal. The minister keeps recalling the situation under the Liberals, but he should realize that the Liberals were judged by the Canadian people in 1984 and 1988. The people of Montreal don't want to know what the Liberals did or did not do but what the Minister of Labour, the minister responsible for Montreal and especially for East Montreal, intends to ask the government in the way of emergency measures.


MEMBER FOR DUVERNAY
Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: Madam Speaker, last night on The Journal the member for Duvernay made a statement in relation to our aboriginal people that we in
the New Democratic Party, and I am sure most Canadians, find offensive.
The statement was both racist and bigoted. When this type of statement is made by any Canadian it must be challenged. When it is made by a member of Parliament is it unforgivable. At a time when Canadian national unity is at stake and there is a need to promote greater understanding and tolerance, this type of statement is particularly regrettable.
We would call upon the member to immediately apologize to aboriginal peoples and to all Canadians. We call upon the government to dissociate itself from this member and his statement.


ECONOMY RECOVERY
Mr. Clement Couture (Saint-Jean):: Madam Speaker, on February 26 this year, the Minister of Finance brought down his budget for 1991-92. The aim of this Budget is first of all to control inflation and to achieve economic recovery. These measures are necessary to stabilize prices, which will have a positive impact on economic recovery. The measures to control wage settlements in our latest Budget are intended as an example to be followed by all levels of government and the private sector. These measures will make it possible to bring interest rates down even further, to a level compatible with genuine economic recovery, and will improve the standard of living of all Canadians.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister.

On February 15, 1990, the House of Commons of the Parliament of Canada unanimously passed the following motion:
That this House reaffirm its commitment to support, protect and promote linguistic duality in Canada, as reflected by this House in the Constitution Amendment, 1987 and the Official Languages Act 1988.
March 15, 1991

I ask the Acting Prime Minister under whose authority were unelected officials meeting behind closed doors last week at Meech Lake to discuss possible changes to the Official Languages Act?


Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of State (Youth) and Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) and Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, many people were in attendance at the meeting to which the hon. Acting Leader of the Opposition refers, including a number of academics, who made a number of suggestions concerning the future of this country. Obviously, the government is willing to listen to as many suggestions as possible. That is why we have the Spicer commission. We will listen to the Beaudoin-Edwards committee. We will listen to recommendations or suggestions that may come from members of this House.
I would like to tell my hon. friend that our commitment to the Official Languages Act is full and complete and total.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Madam Speaker, my second question is for the same minister. On February 15, 1990, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: "That this House reaffirm its commitment to support, protect and promote linguistic duality in Canada, as reflected by this House in the Constitution Amendment, 1987 and the Official Languages Act, 1988."
I direct my question to the Acting Prime Minister. Last week, under what authority did he put on the table one of the basic issues in Canada, namely our bilingual character, one of the fundamental traits of our country? And under what authority did non-elected public servants put that question on the table?


Marcel Danis: First, Madam Speaker, I want to tell my hon. friend that the Government of Canada did not put anything on the table during that Meech Lake meeting. There have been consultations with various groups, including academics, and certain suggestions were made. Naturally the Government of Canada is quite prepared to listen carefully to all suggestions, be they from academics, from the various commissions struck by the federal and provincial governments, or from members of this House. But I
Oral Questions
should like to say to my colleague that at any time the Government of Canada-

-is fully committed to the Official Languages Act.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Madam Speaker, there is a fundamental contradiction in what the Acting Prime Minister is saying today. On the one hand he is restating the government's support for the Official Languages Act, and on the other hand he says that he is prepared to listen to any particular issue. This is another example-


Mr. McDermid:: What's the matter with that?


Sheila Maureen Copps: -of where the closed-door process at Meech Lake is not going to work.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister state today that there is a fundamental characteristic of this country, and that fundamental characteristic includes our bilingual nature and in particular the protection of language minorities wherever they live in Canada? This item is not negotiable and it should not be put on the table behind closed doors at Meech Lake.


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, as has been made abundantly clear, that question was not put on the table by the government. It is not an open question for this government. The commitment of this government to official bilingualism is clear, constant, and continues.
Let me ask the Acting Leader of the Opposition if she would provide the House of Commons with a list of those questions on which she believes it is improper for Canadians to express their views.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Mr. Paul Martin (LaSalle-Emard):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment.
In the Green Plan, the minister stated, and I quote: "-the federal government has required environmental impact assessments for all proposals coming before the Cabinet for decision. A statement of the environmental implications of new policies and programs will be

March 15, 1991
Oral Questions
made public at the time that the Cabinet initiative is announced".
Last week, in response to a question on free trade with Mexico, his colleague the Minister for International Trade rejected the Green Plan flatly when he said that he was not bound by that clause.
Here is my question: Does the Minister of the Environment agree with his colleague?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (Minister of the Environment):: Madam Speaker, the policy is clear. What was stated in the Green Plan and approved by the Cabinet is that every document submitted to the Cabinet had to contain a section dealing with the environmental implications of the proposed decision.
This policy was implemented and will be enforced. As far as the requirements set as a result of this decision are concerned, we were to release the information contained in that section, or a summary of it, to the Standing Committee of the House on the Environment.


Paul Edgar Philippe Martin: Madam Speaker, let us be very clear that the minister has contradicted his colleague.
The Minister for International Trade has issued a direct challenge to this minister. Last week, the Minister for International Trade stated that the environmental consequences related to trade should not be subject for negotiation within the context of the Mexican free trade agreement.
Two days ago, Mr. William Riley, Director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, stated the contrary. He stated that we should have separate environmental agreements on some matters, yes. But he went on to say that where the environment and trade impact on each other, he accepted the linkage of the two within the Mexican free trade agreement. That is only common sense.
Which side is the Minister of the Environment on, that of common sense or that of the Minister for International Trade?


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, there is no dichotomy because common sense and the Minister for International Trade are one and the same thing.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


John Carnell Crosbie: The hon. gentleman certainly has not quoted me accurately. I have said that the U.S.-Canada-Mexico negotiation on a free trade agreement is a trade negotiation.
If there are concerns about environmental matters, then they can be dealt with in a parallel negotiation. They will not likely be dealt with in a trade negotiation. This is the same position as Mrs. Hills has taken in the United States.


Mrs. Campbell (South West Nova):: Use some common sense.


John Carnell Crosbie: They ask questions, and then you hear this mumbling and muttering while you are trying to respond, Madam Speaker. I am a person of some shyness, and this frightens me.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, just as we did in the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, we negotiated an environmental agreement, signed just two days ago.
If it is necessary and if it looks like there is a lot of interest, we will negotiate on a parallel track with respect to the environment.
By the way, we already have an environmental agreement with Mexico that was signed by the Prime Minister a year ago. We are working with Mexico on the environmental issues.


OFFICIAL LANGUAGES ACT
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. This is a supplementary to the question of the hon. leader of the opposition.
The Secretary of State for External Affairs tells us that he and his government support this country's Official Languages Act. Considering that a representative of his party approached our party with a proposition to abolish
March 15, 1991

Oral Questions
the parliamentary committee on official languages, can the minister explain why, if he supports official languages in this country, we have a proposition by the government of Canada to abolish the parliamentary committee on official languages?


Marcel Danis: Madam Speaker, I am not personally aware of my colleague making the representations the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville alleges were made. However, I can assure him of our full, complete and total support to the Official Languages Act.
I want to thank him and his party for supporting the motion we introduced in this House on February 15, 1990.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Madam Speaker, another question in terms of national unity in this country that is very, very important, and this again goes to the Secretary of State for External Affairs, the Acting Prime Minister. Last June, about 10 days before the Meech Lake Accord collapsed, the Prime Minister made a proposal to aboriginal people of this country, and included about six points, including the establishment of a royal commission on aboriginal rights and a greater definition of the treaty rights of aboriginal people.
Also, a comment was made last night by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue, and I quote, "It's like the Indians, they do not respect our laws, they do not respect the Constitution, but they want to have the money".
In light of that comment by the member for Duvemay, will the minister first of all dissociate the government from that comment about Indian people and second, would it now move to implement the promises made to aboriginal people in the middle of June of last year?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the question of the statement carried on The Journal, a statement by our colleague from Duvemay, the hon. member will know that the member issued a statement this morning and I will quote, if I might, Madam Speaker, a brief reference from that.

"The hon. member explained that he was thinking of the behaviour of certain warriors during the crisis at Oka last summer when he said those words."

It was consequently, Madam Speaker, a statement, as I understand it, more limited than is suggested by the hon. member.


An hon. member:: Look at the transcript.


Charles Joseph Clark: I will nonetheless take a look at the whole transcript. The hon. member suggests we take a look. She has been on The Journal and she will know that sometimes not each of her priceless words is recorded on the television program. We will look at the transcript and see if any further action remains to be taken.
With respect to consultations with the aboriginal people, of course it is the intention of the government to find appropriate and effective ways in which those consultations can proceed.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I want to pursue this point with the Acting Prime Minister.
Last June the Prime Minister made a commitment to doing six different items for the aboriginal people, including a better definition of treaty rights to be enshrined in the Constitution; a recognition of aboriginal people as a fundamental characteristic of this country; and most important, the establishment of a fully fledged royal commission on aboriginal rights of the stature of the commission on bilingualism many, many years ago.
I would like to ask the Acting Prime Minister whether or not he thinks that the proper way to start this important round of constitutional studies we are about to enter into would be to fulfil these promises made to the aboriginal people, the first nations of this country. Is that not the proper way to begin this very, very important round of constitutional talks that are so vital to all the people of this country? Is that not the proper signal to send?


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has, I am sure, been following some of the questions of his leader in the House. He will know that she has referred, among other things, to the interest expressed again most recently by aboriginal leaders to be involved in discussions. She referred, I believe yesterday in the House of Commons,

March 15, 1991
Oral Questions
to a letter sent by the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, a letter of which she had a copy but which had not, at that time, been received or seen by the Prime Minister.
I now have a copy of that letter and we naturally are going to be responding to that letter in a way that encourages the fullest possible involvement of aboriginal people, including aboriginal leaders in discussions of Canada's Constitution.


UNEMPLOYMENT
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Finance, I address my question to the Acting Prime Minister. The finance minister's home town of Toronto is not, as the government perceives, the fat-cat city, but rather a tale of two cities with a chronic unemployment undercurrent.
Given that Toronto unemployment is reaching double digits in which 194,000 people were unemployed in February, up 25,000 from January and that since 1989,
75,000	jobs were lost in Toronto, more than half in the manufacturing sector, will the Acting Prime Minister acknowledge the devastating impact that government policies have had on the Toronto economy and when will the government provide the federal leadership necessary to kick-start an indispensable engine of the Canadian economy?


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, the city of Toronto and surrounding areas commonly referred to as the Golden Horseshoe, probably saw unprecedented growth in the period 1984 up to early 1990. Jobs were plentiful. The unemployment rate was very, very low. During this period of time, unemployment has risen, but it is still the lowest unemployment rate in this country.
From reports coming out of Toronto, we are seeing some turns in the economy which we expected. It is still not what we would like it to be and we probably will not come out of it until the summer. But I can say that with housing sales having doubled over the last month, there
is activity again in Toronto, especially with first-time home buyers, I am informed. Interest rates have dropped over 4 per cent. They dropped again slightly yesterday, continuing their downward trend. We feel very confident that Toronto and in fact all regions of this country will benefit from the activities and the policies of this government.


Sergio Marchi: Madam Speaker, the only turns happening in Toronto are going downward. Again, I go back to the Acting Prime Minister.
The true tale of Toronto is that there are 123,000 people on the welfare rolls. The Toronto housing and construction industries are in a nosedive. Nine hundred Toronto businesses went bankrupt last month and
110,000	Torontonians feed themselves thanks to the the good graces of the 200 food banks operating in that city.
Why is the government's federal budget so void of employment initiatives that are so desperately needed by real Canadians facing real problems? When are we going to put Canadians back to work?


John Horton McDermid: I take a look at some of the headlines coming out of Toronto: "Resales Boom", "Relief as Toronto home sales double". Economic activity is starting to come back in the Toronto area. These are from Toronto papers. I understand the concern of the hon. member.
We are concerned about the unemployed as well. But we remember very well a previous government that tried to throw money at problems and did not solve any problems. It did not solve the problem in any way, shape or form.
What this government wants is the economy back on track, permanent full-time jobs, not part-time jobs with money thrown at them because that does not solve the problem. The problems can be solved by sticking to the proposals brought forward by the Minister of Finance in his very well accepted budget of February.
Our economy will be back moving again early in the summer and by 1992 the hon. member will up singing the praises of this government and the economy in Toronto.
March 15, 1991


POVERTY
Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health or, perhaps, to whom it may concern.
Financial analysts estimate that $5 billion invested in better day care, before and after school programs, and in higher incomes and more community support for single parents will result in 187,000 children remaining in school and receiving adequate education.
Does the minister not think this $5 billion is a worth-while investment for Canada?


Marcel Danis: Madam Speaker, the Minister of National Health and Welfare is, of course, concerned with the poverty rate and the children in Canada. That is why since we have come into office over 300,000 children who were under the poverty line before are not any longer. So we have made progress.
With regard to the second part of the question which refers to children staying in school and the amounts of money that we put into those programs, I suggest to my hon. friend that he take a look at one of our recent initiatives which was the Stay In School initiative, whereby the federal government will provide over the next four years an amount of $300 million to try to decrease the horrible drop-out rate of children, especially poor children, in this country.
We are proud of the initiatives of this government and I am very proud of the initiatives of the Minister of National Health and Welfare.


Rey D. Pagtakhan: Mr. Speaker, it is not enough. There is a great deal of difference between $300 million and $5 billion.
My supplementary is for the same minister. The Senate's recent report Children In Poverty-Toward a Better Future states that those 187,000 Canadians would contribute $23 billion to the Canadian economy over 20 years. That means an additional $7 billion plus income taxes and over $1 billion in sales taxes.
Oral Questions
Given those numbers, why does the minister persist in relegating Canadian families to the tragic cycle of poverty? Why continue to cut programs that generate wealth and opportunities?


Marcel Danis: I would like to refer my hon. friend to one statistic which I think is very meaningful; that is the total of our three main transfer payments to the provinces- the EPF, equalization payments and the CAP program.
When we came into office in 1984, the amount was $22 billion. I would like to tell my hon. friend that now the federal government is transferring to the provinces over $36 billion this year. That is an increase of approximately 6.9 annually per cent since we have been in office. So the increase in transfer payments has been much higher to the provinces than the increase in the budget of the federal government.


ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister who will recall a few months ago that the Prime Minister announced a war on drugs and asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to play a critical in drug enforcement in Canada. He also will know that the RCMP is one of Canada's most famous symbols, both nationally and internationally.
I would also say to my hon. friend that the RCMP is one of the institutions that unifies Canada at this very, very difficult moment.
My question to the Acting Prime Minister is this: In 16 days the federal government will abandon its traditional role of support for the RCMP in terms of cutting back on the amount of money it provides for its support.
Can the Acting Prime Minister explain why, at this very critical moment in our history, the federal government would be abandoning its support for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?


Hon. Pierre H. Cadieux (Solicitor General of Canada):: Madam Speaker, I think all of us here will agree with part of what my hon. friend has said; the importance and

March 15, 1991
Oral Questions
the good reputation of the RCMP, the famous reputation of the RCMP.
There is no intention whatsoever by this government to cut back RCMP services throughout the provinces, territories and municipalities where they have been serving so well and will continue to serve.
There is one reality on the other hand that has to be taken into consideration, and that is the cost of the RCMP to serve in those provinces, territories or municipalities; and that is under a contract that was signed 10 years ago to which there are some adjustments that are necessary. That is what we have been trying to do.
We made an offer in September 1989 to start discussions to renew, not abandon, the contracts. I am available to meet with my counterparts whenever they are available between now and March 31, to not only make sure that the RCMP continues but to settle the terms that are agreeable to every party. We have indicated that we are prepared to phase in some of those costs as of the first of April.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, it is clear that the federal government found $600 million to provide protection for Kuwaiti citizens. I do not think it unreasonable to expect the federal government to come up with adequate funding to provide security and safety to Canadian citizens, wherever they may live.
My supplementary question is directed to the Acting Prime Minister who comes from western Canada where the impact will be greatest and where in fact millions and millions of dollars will be added to the local taxpayers in the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.
Does he and his colleagues support at this very critical time loading up the local taxpayers with additional policing costs and as a result requiring many local municipalities to look to their own policing options and perhaps beginning the demise of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in western Canada?
Does he and his colleagues support this abandoning of the RCMP in terms of funding at this very critical moment in Canadian history?


Pierre H. Cadieux: Madam Speaker, I think it is very important. My hon. colleague should be a little bit less partisan on this issue, because what is occurring is that there are services provided to eight provinces, two territories, and I believe 190 municipalities across the land, except in Quebec and Ontario.
The contract was signed in 1981 for a 10-year period provided that in 1990, at the date we are right now, the split between the provinces and the federal government would be 70 per cent supported by the provinces and 30 per cent paid by the Government of Canada and all taxpayers across the country.
We are not charging 100 per cent of the service. We are now charging 70 per cent of the service, and we are looking at a very modest increase of 5 per cent for the next 10 years.


PUBLIC SERVICE OF CANADA
Mrs. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Acting Prime Minister.
The very day after the budget's vicious ultimatum to public sector workers to sacrifice their income or sacrifice their co-workers, a secret letter to deputy ministers was telling them to push managers down the line and push the lowest paid workers out the door.
Is it not time the government told Canadians how much it is costing them to contract out the jobs of the Public Service? Is it not time it revealed how it is damaging service to the unemployed, to veterans, and to the elderly? Is it not time to admit that all this pain and suffering has not done one iota to cut the deficit?


Hon. Harvie Andre (Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Madam Speaker, the hon. member is inaccurate in her accusations of somehow conspiracy occurring. It is not surprising that deputy ministers communicate with each other both orally and in written form. She chooses to call them secret as if some conspiracy is involved. I humbly suggest that when she talks to her staff she does not issue the transcript to the rest of the world.
The reality is as the budget indicated. The Government of Canada, as its contribution to the necessary fight to bring expenditures at the public level under control so that we do not continue to borrow and borrow and leave

March 15, 1991

our children with this horrendous debt which will surely hobble them in whatever they might try to do in the future, placed an over-all freeze on O and M expenditures for government and within that context the wage increases will be kept to 3 per cent.
Most of the country considers that a reasonable request, given the fiscal regime the government is faced with.


Marlene Catterall: Madam Speaker, my supplementary is directed to the same minister. This is not an exercise to reduce the Public Service or the deficit. It is an exercise in reducing services to the public. It is now quite obvious that this government has no intention of revitalizing the Public Service. Its secret plan is to destroy the Public Service, another institution that is vital to Canadian unity.
In the circumstances, how can the minister expect his officials to collaborate with Public Service 2000 Plan, the subject of a number of meetings being held today? And how can he expect them to provide an efficient and quality service when all his officials have been the target of vicious and arbitrary attacks, for purely political reasons?


Marcel Prud'homme: Good question.


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, the hon. member's wild hyperbole about destruction of the public service, denying of services and so on are absurd, and she knows it.
It would be a lot more helpful to the public of Canada who are paying the salaries of the public servants and to public servants themselves, if in fact we would reduce the level of hyperbole, talk about the real problems in real language and not for the benefit of television cameras with all of these wild exaggerations.
Public Service 2000 is a regime that we firmly believe will result in a more motivated, happier Public Service and better service to the public. That is why that change is being looked at.
In terms of the other accusations, I think I answered them in my response to her first question.
Oral Questions THE ENVIRONMENT


Mr. Jack Iyerak Anawak (Nunatsiaq):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment.
On Wednesday, the Federal Court upheld the James Bay and Northern Quebec agreement as a federal law and said that the environmental assessment of the Great Whale River project is primarily a federal matter.
I will quote briefly from that judgment: "There is no doubt in my mind that Parliament intended the agreement to operate as a substantive enactment, as if the agreement had become part of the statute. Parliament appears unequivocal as to its intention and purpose".
Would the federal government, which has constitutional responsibility over the aboriginal people, agree now to follow the environmental provisions of the 1975 James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement?


Robert René de Cotret: Madam Speaker, as my colleague certainly knows, we are presently at the federal level doing a study through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans of the infrastructure proposals made for that project. That study is near completion. We have had public input, and I will be receiving from my colleague, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, recommendations as to the next steps to follow.
We have also entered into an agreement with Quebec to have a joint review of the over-all Grande-Baleine project. We are at the point now where we are negotiating or discussing with the Cree and the Inuit to determine an appropriate chairperson for that very important panel which is composed of four committees.
We are certainly moving well along the road of fulfilling our obligations to native people and to all Canadians in terms of ensuring that the process is followed.


Jack Iyerak Anawak: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister.

March 15, 1991
Oral Questions
I will briefly quote something from The Gazette of Montreal which says: "Quebec's most important Inuit organization says Hydro Quebec impact study on Great Whale roads and airports is fatally flawed".
Will this government agree that it has full jurisdiction to ensure that not a shovel hits the ground on the infrastructure until a federal public impact study has been completed on the over-all project?


Robert René de Cotret: Madam Speaker, I am not to comment on Hydro Quebec's own impact studies.
As I mentioned earlier, we are doing our own federal impact studies on the infrastructure. What is at stake here is very important. What is at stake here is a process that has to be respected in terms of the environmental impact of everything that is being proposed in that region of the country.
It is a massive project and the environmental impacts have to be evaluated. They have to be evaluated because what we are trying to do here, under the theme of sustainable development, is ensure that we preserve the environment for generations to come. That is the commitment of this government and that is exactly what we are about to do.


WAGE INCREASES
Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Madam Speaker, I also have a question for the government. It relates to a matter that the government House leader answered earlier in Question Period.
On February 25, 26, and 27, this government managed to deliver three contradictory and different messages with regard to its economic plan.
On the 25th, it secretly increases the salaries of top level public servants and management of the Bank of Canada in this country.
On the 26th, in the budget, the finance minister calls on those who make much less to restrict their salary increases to 3 per cent and says that for every 1 per cent increase there could be the loss of 2,000 jobs in the Public Service.
On the day after that, the Secretary of the Treasury Board, Ian Clark, says that it will be done through attrition, not through job loss.
Why is it that this government cannot keep the same economic message for three days in a row?


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, the hon. member first off raises again the question which was answered by my colleague, the President of the Treasury Board, in terms of the 4.2 per cent.
As he knows, those are the salaries for Governor in Council appointees for which the government seeks the opinion of a private sector advisory board established by the previous government many years ago. It recommended a 6 per cent increase for 1990, last year. The government said no.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


Harvie Andre: I wonder if the member could ask his colleague behind him if she would calm down and I will try to answer. The government said 4.2 per cent, but that was for 1990. I repeat, last year, 1990.
On February 25, in the budget, the Minister of Finance indicated that there would be a 3 per cent ceiling on salary increases and a freeze on O and M. It translates that if everybody gets 3 per cent, the drop in the operations and maintenance budget of government would probably provide for about 6,000 fewer jobs.
The Secretary of the Treasury Board said: "However annually there is about a 12,000 turnover in the Public Service, therefore it is not likely, even if everybody received the maximum of 3 per cent, that there would be
6,000	layoffs. In fact probably any positions that are lost would be accommodated through attrition."
Those are absolutely consistent, and I am sure even the NDP can understand that.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, I think it is obvious that if the government checked on the pay increases of other public servants and they had an independent judgment, they would also be getting more than 3 per cent or 4 per cent.
The problem with this government is that those people who give advice to the government made sure their pay increases were made the day before the budget. Those people who knew what was in the budget also had letters
March 15, 1991

written, to be delivered the day after the budget, which contradicted the message that the Minister of Finance was giving to this nation.
Why did the government deliberately mislead the Canadian people in terms of what it wanted to do? Why did it deliberately leave a different message with-


Some hon. members:: Withdraw.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Unfortunately I am uncertain of what has been said because of his distance from the Chair. I will allow the hon. minister to answer.


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, if you check the "blues" you will find that he accused the government of deliberately misleading, which is out of order, and I would request that he withdraw that comment.
I realize it is not in the interest of the New Democratic Party to understand that which is clearly understandable. In terms of from February 25 forward, both those who advise the government from within the Public Service and those who advise the government from the House of Commons will not receive salary increases greater than 3 per cent. Everything is consistent in terms of from the budget forward.
The hon. member keeps talking about what happened in respect of last year and intermixing that with what will happen in terms of February 25 forward. That seems to be typical of NDP thinking.


CHINESE CANADIANS
Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Madam Speaker, the government knows that 81,000 Chinese Canadians paid more than $23 million in head tax to be in Canada and then lived for 24 years with a total ban on immigration of other Chinese, including their families.
Over three years ago, the minister responsible promised Chinese Canadians that he would take to cabinet the question of redress for 62 years of legislated racism against Chinese Canadians. When would the government deliver on its promise?
Hon. Marcel Danis (Minister of State (Youth) and Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) and Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of
Oral Questions
Commons): Madam Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Employment and Immigration, I would like to take the question under consideration.
I would be happy to report to my hon. friend as soon as possible.


Mac Harb: Madam Speaker, maybe the minister can take this with him to the minister responsible.
We on this side of the House have repeatedly called on the government to set up an all-party committee to study and to consult with the Chinese community on this issue in order to resolve this matter.
Over the weekend, the Chinese Canadian community will be meeting in Toronto. I am asking the minister to tell Canadians whether he has any good news to report to them over this weekend on this issue so we can solve it once and for all.


Marcel Danis: Madam Speaker, I will certainly take my friend's comments as a representation to the minister.
I know that he refers to a substantial number of years. In closing, I would just like to remind him that the Liberals were in office for a long time during that period.


FISHERIES
[Stage Direction]
Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands -
Canso): Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, I would like to direct my question to the Acting Prime Minister today.
The decision of the minister of fisheries last December to cut the offshore share of the cod quota in 4T-Vn has directly threatened the viability of Richmond Fisheries and the livelihood of hundreds of families on Isle Madame.
Today Richmond Fisheries announced that it was tying up two of its four trawlers, throwing 26 trawlermen out of work. This decision is directly linked to recent offshore quota cuts, including the minister's December decision.
Will the minister of fisheries, today, restore Richmond Fisheries' traditional share before further job losses occur?
[Stage Direction]
March 15, 1991
Oral Questions
Mr. Ross Reid (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Madam Speaker, the decision of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Government of Canada on the allocation of quota is based on the long-term interests of all fishermen and those who depend on the fish, whether they be plant workers or people related to them.
The decisions are based on scientific advice and consultation with industry which ensures down the road that we have fish for as many people as possible and in as a sustainable way as possible, with maximum incomes.
The effects on Richmond Fisheries and so many others are unfortunate, but they are in the long-term interest of all those who depend on the fishery. That is why this government put in a $584 million program to try to ameliorate the effects on individuals and on communities.
I know my hon. friend is aware of this. Many of his constituents have benefited from this very substantial, well thought out and progressive program.


Mr. Francis G. LeBlanc (Cape Breton Highlands - Canso):: Madam Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his response except that it misses the point.
The point is that the quota cut for 4T-Vn cod in the winter fishery was carried out in violation of principle X of the fisheries management plan and was carried out without consultation last December. In fact it does not appear to be supported by the scientific evidence which the parliamentary secretary cites.
If that quota cut is pursued, it will directly threaten the livelihood of at least 375 workers and trawlermen at Petit de Grat, at Richmond Fisheries. It is that decision which we are asking the minister to reconsider.


Ian Angus Ross Reid: Madam Speaker, may I suggest that I did not miss the question, but my colleague may have missed the answer.
As he well knows, the management of any fishery is complicated. I would not suggest to him that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is a place to have to work if one likes the easy life.
Obviously there is a series of conflicting interests within the fishery: types of gear, the nature of different species approaches and that sort of thing.
The minister of fisheries must balance that, and some of those decisions are very difficult. Some hurt but they are in the long-term interest of as many people as possible, taking into account the conflicting interests.
Unfortunately, as some people are hurt by the fishery, it is the intention of this government to make sure that in the long term that pays off for as many people as possible.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Acting Prime Minister.
The Liberal government of Newfoundland is decimating the health care system of that province. It is closing 360 acute care hospital beds, including closure of acute care treatment at Port aux Basques. They are now denying a large number of Newfoundland residents basic medical care. The government opposite has repeatedly said it will enforce the Canada Health Act. The Canada Health Act states that the health care insurance plan of a province must provide health services on uniform conditions.
Will this government finally commit itself to enforcing the Canada Health Act and inform Newfoundland that it will not accept this basic cut to health care?
Hon. John C. Crosbie (Minister for International
Tirade): Madam Speaker, with reference to that question, the Government of Canada in the fiscal year starting April 1 is transferring to the Government of Newfoundland in excess of $1,400,000,000 for purposes of the Established Programs Financing, tax equalization, and our share of the Canada Assistance Plan. The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is responsible for the administration of the provincial health system. It is getting substantial assistance from the Government of Canada; in excess of 45 per cent of all of the revenue of the Government of Newfoundland has been transferred to it by the Government of Canada.
March 15, 1991

The Government of Newfoundland is responsible for administering the health system. It has been given funds to do that, and it will have to accept the responsibility for the decisions it is making in connection with that health care system, which is getting very generous assistance from the Government of Canada.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, I would like to formally designate Monday as an allotted day for supply.


POINT OF ORDER
Harvie Andre: While I am on my feet, I would like to remind the Chair that the hon. member for Churchill did say that the government "deliberately" misled the House of Commons and Canada. That is contrary to the rules of this House, and I would ask the hon. member for Churchill to stand up and withdraw those remarks.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, I do not believe what I said contradicts the rules of the House of Commons. My understanding-and I have checked the rules before in this regard-is that if I had referred to a specific minister, that would be the case. However, if after we have had a chance to review the case the rules do indicate differently, I would withdraw.
Certainly with regard to the government's intention, I maintain the words that I used earlier.


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate that these not really constraining rules, which guide us in terms of decorum and mature behaviour, are deemed not to apply to the member for Churchill. It is regrettable that he should assume that only by stretching the rules, breaking the rules, can he make his point. If he would rely on logic and moderate tones, perhaps he would better serve his constituents and the rest of this country.
Routine Proceedings


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Unfortunately, at the precise moment the hon. member was speaking, I had taken off the hearing aid which allows us to hear better in the House. I do not know for sure whether or not the hon. member said "deliberately", which would be against the rules of the House.
I will ask the House to allow me to check the "blues", which I am sure the hon. member for Churchill will do as well. Should it be that he is out of order, I am sure the hon. member will do the honourable thing and will apologize.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, I will take your advice under consideration and will look at the "blues" myself and check the precedents. However, I regret the fact that the government House leader went on in the second round to attack me personally. Before he attacks the other members of the House, he should remember that he was one of those members who actually physically charged the Chair in the past.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I think the wise thing to do on this nice Friday afternoon is to go with Tabling of Documents.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Robert René de Cotret: It is my privilege to table the government's response in both official languages to the interim report of the Standing Committee on the Environment, entitled: No Time to Lose-The Challenge of Global Warming.


PETITIONS
Mr. Barry Moore (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to four petitions.

March 15, 1991
Routine Proceedings
[Editor's Note: See today's Votes and Proceedings.]	My colleague, the Minister of National Defence, and
the Chief of the Defence Staff, also visited Bahrain,
Qatar, and the field hospital at Aljubayl, to express the
gratitude of Canada to our troops and to the countries [English]	which hosted them.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, may I begin by expressing to my colleagues who are critics for other parties in this House my regret that there was a brief delay in my transmitting a copy to them of the statement I intend to make. As members of the House will know, this has been a long week and I apologize to them for the 10 or 15 minute delay in delivering that statement.
Over the last seven and a half months, the Kuwait crisis has riveted our attention and engaged much of our debate.
Today Kuwait is again a free country, though deeply scarred by its ordeal.
I visited free Kuwait five days ago. I raised over the Canadian Embassy there, the flag our diplomats so reluctantly took down when they were forced by lack of food and water to leave on October 19.
I wish now to report to the House on that trip which began, quite deliberately, with a call on the Secretary-General of the United Nations in New York and which took me to Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran as well as Kuwait and the United States. I met with leaders of those countries and with the foreign ministers of Egypt and of Italy, and with leading Palestinians from the Occupied Territories.
In Jordan, I visited the headquarters of United Nations agencies working with the casualties and the consequences of the conflict. The Canadian government is contributing to many of their activities, but I want to draw the attention of the House and of Canadians to the United Nations Children's Fund operated by UNICEF for humanitarian assistance for the children who are victims of the conflict. The government has contributed an additional $550,000 to that fund and I hope individual Canadians might make their own contribution to that special Gulf Disaster Relief Appeal, organized by UNICEF Canada to provide medical and humanitarian assistance to mothers and children suffering the effects of that conflict.
My purpose was to look beyond the liberation of Kuwait to the issues this crisis has underscored. The fundamental problems remain, but there are now new possibilities which need to be nurtured.
My interest, as the foreign minister of Canada, was everywhere understood and welcomed. As a member of the coalition of countries who, through the United Nations, came to the aid of Kuwait, Canada's commitment to the liberation of Kuwait was clear.
But Canada also represents a lifetime of commitment to the United Nations. My primary mission was to try to ensure that that the sort of world consensus which emerged to free Kuwait be further mobilized to prevent such aggression in the future, and to strengthen the chances of enduring peace and security. That is the first lesson of this crisis.
There are other lessons. As the Prime Minister said on February 18, one such lesson is that reckless transfers of arms must come to an end. Canada's commitment and record on arms control entitle us to place this item high on the world's agenda. I reviewed with leaders of other countries of some of our proposals to reduce the flow and risk of arms.
Progress, of course, will be slow, but everyone I met in the immediate aftermath of a decade of conflict in the gulf acknowledged the need to address this problem, and to do so practically and persistently. The House should know that in some gulf countries the immediate reflex may be to buy new arms to deal with threats they believe will continue. That underlines the need for countries like Canada to advance proposals like those the Prime Minister has set forth.
But for real peace and security to emerge and for arms transfers to diminish, the underlying causes of tension have to be resolved. These tensions, many of which relate to enduring disputes between Israel and her neighbours, were a major topic of my discussions.
Madam Speaker, no one in the Middle East has forgotten a single moment of history, and there is a lot of history to overcome. There is now, however, an opportu-
March 15, 1991

Routine Proceedings
nity-now, but not for long. The world must not lose that opportunity.

Many of us have said that the recent events have changed the Middle East forever. Canada's purpose has been to make those changes for the better-to strengthen the United Nations, to increase the control of arms and to reduce the risk of war, and to resolve the tensions at the root of insecurity in the Middle East.
I congratulated Mr. Perez de Cuellar, on behalf of the people of Canada, for his resolution during this crisis. He thanked Canada for our support, and believed that Canada had set an example for other states by our determination to settle this crisis through the United Nations. He informed me that the United Nations is poised to police the separation of forces, once an official request is received from the Government of Kuwait.
He also urged us to try to heal some of the wounds of this crisis by helping leaders with whom Canada has close ties-such as King Hussein of Jordan. He was concerned about the Palestinians whose leadership had been so criticized, but whose right represent a continuing challenge to the reputation for fairness and effectiveness of the United Nations. Indeed, this issue dominated many of my subsequent discussions.
On my way to the region, I also met with Secretary of State Baker, just before he embarked on his own tour. He shared our view that there is a psychological moment of opportunity to be seized on the agenda for arms control. His immediate concerns were with the arrangements for regional security which would enable the United States to withdraw its ground forces from the theatre and bring the troops home.
Even as we spoke, of course, the Foreign Ministers of the Gulf Co-operation Council were meeting in Damascus with the Foreign Ministers of Syria and Egypt to reach agreement on the stationing of Syrian and Egyptian ground forces in Kuwait, to replace Coalition ground forces, once a definitive ceasefire with Iraq was arranged.

Madam Speaker, I believed that my trip to the area should begin with the government of Kuwait. The Emir of Kuwait was still in Taif, in Saudi Arabia, where he had
spent the occupation. His appreciation for Canada's contribution to the liberation of Kuwait was heartfelt. The Emir was deeply concerned at the damage to his people and to his state. Plans are already beginning for the massive reconstruction of Kuwait and I welcomed the clear assurances that the expertise of Canadian companies will enjoy opportunities commensurate with the important role Canada played in liberating Kuwait.
The senseless damage to Kuwait must be seen to be believed. Across the limitless desert landscape burn innumerable fires, each set deliberately with powerful charges of high explosives. Downtown, on the waterfront, are burned-out building after building, looted store after store, museums, homes, things of value or merit, trashed. This was not war damage; this city was put to the torch in the last 48 hours of occupation.
For the Kuwaitis, the ending of sanctions against Iraq is therefore a major problem. Should oil exports again earn revenues for Iraq when Kuwait remains crippled? On the other hand, Iraq itself is badly damaged and needs to finance its own recovery. One idea being explored by countries of the region is the dedication of a proportion of Iraq's oil revenues to repair the damage Saddam Hussein has done.
Much will depend on what kind of regime survives in Iraq. Saddam Hussein is now being challenged by his own people. But through the force of arms and oppression he can cling to power. As long as he does, the countries of the region will be wary of his designs and will want continued sanctions on anything enabling him to rebuild his armies.
In Kuwait, there is a mood calling for change in the way the country governs itself. The government says it is anxious to open up the regime, to institute more democracy. I encouraged that development and urged that particular care be taken to allow the reintegration of Palestinian residents of Kuwait, many of whom, most of whom, were intensely loyal to Kuwait.
Almost everyone with whom I met indicated that the Palestinian problem is the key issue to be resolved in the region. The answer will have to be found in greater security for all states of the area. The issue has three essential elements which all must be respected. They are the security of the state of Israel, the rights of the Palestinians and territory.

March 15, 1991
Routine Proceedings
Sequence and relationship-which goes first, and what is tied to what-could consume thought, discussion and negotiation for years. Meanwhile, were that to occur, the despair of the refugee camps would find more radical expression and the arms race would go on.
I sought in my discussions in Jordan, in Syria, in Israel, and in the home of a leading Palestinian, Faisal Husseini, to promote appreciation of the need to build confidence in the collective ability of states and peoples to live together in acceptance and security. Eventually, a healthier state of mind can be built. There is not a lot of time. The countries and peoples concerned could make gestures, take initiatives, not of a kind which bear upon their fundamental security interests, but which build up a habit of working together. That is the message I left with all those with whom I met.
Could not Lebanon be the theatre of such co-operative action to further strengthen the authority of the government of Lebanon?
Could some progress be made among the states and parties on water projects?
Can peoples see their welfare in terms of a shared and more harmonious future, instead of a bitterly divided past?
Madam Speaker, it is not clear that they can. But that is the best way to build trust.
Much time in this discussion is devoted to technique, to whether it should be an international conference, at the United Nations or not at the United Nations, or whether it should be separate bilateral negotiations, and whether discussion between the Palestinians and the Israelis should be part of that or separate, and, in any case, who should represent the Palestinians, and so on.
On that last point, Canada can only agree with the Secretary-General of the United Nations; the Palestinians should be represented by the organizations or representatives they choose. Our distaste for the support for Saddam Hussein by the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization should not disqualify Palestinians from coming to their conclusions on what we have always said was fundamental; their right to choose their own leadership in the search for realization of their legitimate rights.
As I said in Jerusalem to the Prime Minister of Israel, we are among the closest friends of that country.
Canada will not let Israel be put at risk. As the Prime Minister of Canada said on February 8, and as President Bush said a week ago, there is no security in geography.
I also went to Iran. My meeting with President Rafsanjani was productive. Of course, we discussed problems-human rights and hostages for example. But we did so in a way which gave me hope that Canada can work well with Iran.
These countries are all neighbours of Iraq. They are not disinterested in the outcome of the current uprising there. Indeed, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran have brought together in Lebanon the leaders of the various groups representing the masses of people wishing to be done with Saddam Hussein's tyranny, not just the Shiite majority in the south, not just the Kurdish minority in the north, but others as well. We have always said that the future of Iraq is up to the Iraqis. I encouraged other states in the region not to intervene.
I have been encouraged by all the leaders I spoke with. They want a durable peace in the region. They are however not yet ready to move beyond the liberation of Kuwait to address the age-old problems on which they have been so long divided, except with wariness and with distrust. But move they must. Or the arms race will spiral, and the United Nations will lose the lustre of its concerted action to liberate Kuwait. That would be our common loss.
By its nature, this is an interim report to the House, and I will be coming back to the standing committee as early as next week.
My conversations last week gave me a more direct understanding of attitudes in a region whose conflicts are deep and dangerous. They reinforced Canada's ability to play a constructive role in calming those conflicts and in using the end of a war to begin a real peace. I know that all members of this House share our commitment to that goal.
As our ships head home from the gulf, proud of our contribution to one victory, we are seeking now to address the sources of that conflict. Last July no one foresaw the invasion of Kuwait; no one foresaw the unprecedented response of the United Nations. We cannot foresee the developments of the next several

months except to say that they offer a real chance to resolve the most intractable conflict the world knows, and it is in Canada's interest to make the most of that opportunity.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Fred J. Mifflin: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the right hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs for his statement on the Persian Gulf crisis and the search for peace, and indeed the role that Canada has played. I found it very interesting as I am sure all members of the House did.
On behalf of the Liberal caucus, I would like to respond to the hon. minister's statement.

Like all Canadians, the Liberal caucus is happy and relieved that the war in the Persian Gulf ended so quickly. The primary objective of the United Nations, supported by all Canadians to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait and restore this country's sovereignty was achieved.

The Liberal caucus commends all members of the Canadian Armed Forces, especially those stationed in the gulf region, for their professionalism and their dedication in carrying out their duties. I also want to register our sincere gratitude to the members of their families for their understanding, their dedication, and indeed their steadfast support in these difficult times. We are all thankful that no Canadian lives were lost.
The end of the war marks only the beginning of a much more difficult challenge facing the international community, the challenge of reconstruction, development and stabilization in the Middle East, as the right hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs has just explained.
The destructive impact of war has been very severe. The economies of Iraq and Kuwait have been virtually destroyed. Those of other states in the region such as Jordan and Egypt have been significantly hurt. Scud missile attacks on Israel destroyed hundreds of housing units. The waters and coastlines of the Persian Gulf are blackened by oil, and the skies over Kuwait and surrounding lands have been darkened by hundreds of oil well fires. Thousands of civilians are homeless and sick; the danger of epidemics is very real. The situation is desperate.
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Estimates of the cost of all the necessary reconstruction, environmental cleanup and humanitarian assistance in the region range well into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Madam Speaker, the war also had a negative impact on many, mostly Third World countries that were not belligerents but suffered as a result of rising oil prices and dwindling export markets.

Moreover, some of the root causes of tension in the region still must be addressed. These include the lack of adequate regional security arrangements, continuing economic and wealth disparities between the various states, problems of democratization and human rights, religious fundamentalism and territorial claims and disputes affecting states and people such as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians.
The impact of the war on the United Nations must also be carefully considered. The members of the coalition, including Canada, have lauded the United Nations for demonstrating the capacity to act on behalf of the international community to halt aggression. We speak of the new world order.
The Liberal caucus agrees there is potential for an important new status for the United Nations, but we are convinced that this requires the United Nations and its agencies to be actively and centrally involved in the search for peace in the Middle East.
The Liberal caucus has always supported the collective security provisions of the United Nations charter. We have always accepted that the use of force to uphold the United Nations principles may be necessary, but as a last resort.
That being said, we recognize that there have been valid concerns expressed about the potentially negative impact on the United Nations, and I say the potentially negative impact on the United Nations, of its willingness to endorse war before other options to resolve the gulf crisis had clearly proven inadequate.
There are valid concerns about the relegation of the Security Council to the sidelines once war had started. There are also valid concerns that the five permanent members of the Security Council, who agreed on the

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issue, may well be disposed to disagree on other issues of international peace and security which might prevent the Security Council from playing a role in the future.
We believe that Canada must be vigorous in ensuring that these concerns are addressed.

Madam Speaker, I would now like to address the search for peace and Canada's role in this respect. The Liberal caucus feels that Canadians should urge their government to play an active role in meeting reconstruction needs in the short term and seeking peace in the long term, in the Near and Middle East. They should also urge the government to encourage the UN to act consistently and consider restructuring the UN to that end.

The government has laid out some preliminary thoughts on this role. The minister has just expanded on these interesting thoughts in the context of his trip to the Middle East. I am sure it must have been a very tiring experience.
I must commend the minister on looking so fresh after what must have been an exhausting experience for him. We welcome him back to the House.


An hon. member:: Bravo.


Fred J. Mifflin: We particularly support the government's interest in humanitarian and other economic assistance, economic cleanup assistance and controls over arms sales to the region.
We note, however, that the visit of President Bush this week to Ottawa, which displayed its undeniable successes, has clearly illustrated the sharp differences of opinion between the Government of Canada and the United States over the issue of controlling conventional arms transfers.
It is sobering to know that since 1961, $1.6 trillion has been spent on arms in the Middle East. As well, I note that the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament recently estimated that the United States plans to sell weapons totalling $25 billion to the Middle East this year.
We urge the government to continue pushing hard on this issue. I note that the standing committee of the House on national defence and veterans affairs is studying this assiduously. We are hoping to come up with some suggestions on a non-partisan basis to the government, which may be able to present some rational and practical achievable ideas in this very difficult and hard to grasp issue which is so key to the downstream happenings in this area of conflict.
I recommend to the Secretary of State for of External Affairs that he undertake a special diplomatic effort to seek out support for reviving the idea of conventional arms transfer talks, first attempted in the late 1970s by the Carter administration.
Liberals believe further aspects of Canada's contribution to building a durable peace in the Middle East should be considered. The following is a series of possible initiatives that we offer and urge the government to support and promote. There are six of them.
First, the promotion of an important role for the United Nations and its member agencies in providing economic aid. The current scramble for reconstruction contracts in Kuwait has not yet been matched by a serious commitment to provide comprehensive aid to the countries of the gulf region hardest hit by the war.
Although a second Marshall Plan of sorts has been suggested by the Government of Canada among others, it would appear that little else is yet being done to co-ordinate an effective aid program that addresses not only reconstruction needs, but also those relating to health and disease prevention, environmental cleanup, food distribution, temporary shelter, management of refugees and some of the other needs.
One means of dealing with these myriad needs is to involve the United Nations and its member agencies which have responsibilities in various agencies requiring assistance. Such agencies include, among others, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Disaster Relief Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization.
An active role by the United Nations and those agencies could help to promote the United Nations legitimacy in the region.
March 15, 1991

The Liberal caucus urges the government to actively promote an initiative by the United Nations Secretary-General to increase the United Nations involvement in relief efforts for the peoples of the gulf region, stressing humanitarian aid and long-term economic aid. Canada could lead by example, earmarking specific funds it intended to contribute to the United Nations for this purpose.
Second, we would like to assist the Third World nations negatively affected by the gulf war. As we have heard this morning, many Third World economies have been severely hurt by higher oil prices and reduced exports due to the crisis in the gulf.
The Liberal caucus believes Canada could play an important role in mitigating this impact through efforts to encourage special assistance in various forms such as increased import quotas, debt relief, reduction measures and new financing.
The government's decision to cut back official development assistance once again in the 1991 budget unfortunately sends the wrong signal at the worst time.
The third initiative relates to peacekeeping and verification. I don't think anybody can deny that our participation in the war limits to some extent our involvement in a peacekeeping operation. We do have experience and we should draw upon that to assist in the organization of such an operation and in the larger task of maintaining the peace.
In our minds, there are two major needs to be met. The first is to provide a framework for conducting an interim border patrol pending the operation of the development of a more permanent regional security arrangement. The second is to develop mechanisms for verifying and monitoring possible agreements on controls over arms transfers and other security arrangements.
The Liberal caucus urges the government to promote a central role for the United Nations in contributing ideas, expertise and co-operation to meeting these needs. We could propose a scheme similar to that used at the time of the Korean War when the Security Council appointed a committee to plan and promote peacemaking and peacekeeping mechanisms.
Next there are confidence and security building measures. "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a
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single step." This is an age-old statement and it has stood the test of time. There is a need to begin slowly building the foundations upon which new political and economic structures can be erected in the Middle East to bring a durable peace in the region. The Liberal caucus believes that Canada could encourage the creation or development of some of these building blocks.
For example, Canada should encourage the states in the region to consider increasing areas of mutual trade. Steps could be taken to encourage moderation and compromise among the countries of the region in the interests of seeking a durable peace. The government should encourage key Arab states to engage Israel in peace negotiations, leading to an end of their formal state of hostilities with that state and an end to the Arab boycott. They could also be asked to affirm Israel's rightful place as a member of the United Nations and support a repeal of the United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism.
The government could also encourage Israel to resume efforts to set up a peace process with Palestinians in the occupied territories as the first step toward achievement of a peace settlement which accords recognition to legitimate Palestinian political rights. We agree with the right hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs that this is a fine requirement.
The fifth initiative involves arms control and arms reductions, to which I spoke earlier. Security, especially for the heavily armed countries of the Middle East, cannot be achieved overnight or through a single event. The Mulroney government's call for a world summit on armaments, while laudable, is no substitute for real steps, however small, that are designed to reduce the likelihood of a military conflict. In fact, they should complement each other.
The Liberal caucus therefore believes that Canada should promote a series of specific arms control and arms reduction initiatives in pursuit of this goal. We should push for a rapid conclusion of a convention on chemical weapons and the strengthening of existing conventions on the use of weapons in war, both conventional and mass destruction. Effort should be put into restricting and prohibiting the transfer of these weapons and their components. Indeed, supplier nations, which include most prominently the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, should themselves be

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encouraged to tighten their export controls and to allow public disclosure of their military exports.
Canada must also place special emphasis on encouraging countries of the Middle East who have not signed the non-proliferation treaty to do so.
Finally the sixth initiative: a review of the security provisions of the United Nations charter. We all know that the charter is over 45 years old and the world has changed significantly. The use of peace and security provisions of the charter during the gulf crisis has been lauded, but legitimate questions were raised about their proper interpretation.
If the United Nations is to emerge as the chief custodian of a new world order and if chapter VII of the UN charter is to play a new and stronger role in enforcing decisions of the UN Security Council, as is our hope, we must ensure that the UN's mandate is fully understood and accepted.
The Liberal caucus therefore believes that it would be of great service to the community of nations if the Secretary-General were to initiate a comprehensive review of the necessary steps provided for conflict resolution under the charter to ensure their effective and consistent application.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: As time has gone by, I have to seek unanimous consent of the House for the hon. member to continue. Is that agreed?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Fred J. Mifflin: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I would like to thank my colleagues, especially the hon. Secretary of State for External Affairs. I do apologize but it is a very important subject. Again I thank my colleagues for their indulgence.
We note in this regard that the United Nations charter provides in chapter VI for a procedure under the authority of the Security Council to settle disputes before aggression occurs.
To our knowledge no attempt was made by the Security Council, which included Canada at the time, to address the Iraq-Kuwait border and oil dispute in the weeks and months before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Indeed, the record shows that Iraq began making threatening military gestures toward Kuwait several weeks before invading, yet no state saw fit to ask the Security Council to consider
chapter VI action. This lack of foresight should not be repeated.
By way of conclusion, the Liberal caucus, in putting forward the six points to the government, is convinced that if the United Nations is to emerge as a leading player in the management of international peace and security, it must be vigorous in promoting its role as an active participant in both the short and long term peace process in the Middle East. There is a window of opportunity there, and we should use it. Canada's position should be one of making every effort to sustain the United Nations in that enterprise.
We should therefore encourage the long-term changes the United Nations requires to become the agent of choice of the world community to lead the process of constructing and maintaining this new world order.


David Barrett: Madam Speaker, I wish to thank the House for the opportunity of commenting on the minister's remarks.
I want to say that I was taken aback at the modesty of the minister apologizing to the House for delaying his comments being made available to us 15 minutes late. I think the House owes the minister a vote of appreciation for so quickly coming back to the House after his arduous journey and presenting this report. It is a compliment to his commitment to the parliamentary system that in spite of the journeys he has been taking he saw fit to come to the House as quickly as possible and present us with this report. He should be commended for that.
I suppose we all do a great deal of thinking about these issues. We are free to decide the world's problems in the security of this wonderful country of Canada. However they are complex problems, and made even more complex by some of the actions we take when we think we are trying to solve them.
The minister has been profoundly open in expressing his opinions about what he perceives Canada's role could be, as a minister responsible to the Crown should be, and should be commended for that. I feel a sense of pride as a western Canadian, understanding that my colleague from Alberta also represents that region and that he plays an important part regionally in this government.
Having said the complimentary things, I must address myself now to the content. We have picked some strange partners in the region. While I listened intently to the comments of the minister, I am compelled to reflect

March 15, 1991

Routine Proceedings
essentially on one of his comments, and that was: "no will be necessary to confront some of those partners we one should forget history". But the question is: Have we allied ourselves to with the very serious problems we learned from it?	have in accepting their backgrounds.
Throughout the process of the coalition, and we are talking about results now, it is well-known that my party would have rather had a longer time with the sanctions. That argument is over, and gracefully it has been accepted as over I think in some elements of the United States as well here in Canada. Now we live with the consequences, and the question of learning with history as it is in front of us.
I put to the minister that we inherited an awful lot of baggage with President Assad of Syria. President Assad of Syria, who we picked up as an ally of necessity during this current crisis, does not come to the table with the kind of background that gives me or my party confidence that in the long run he might not even be a greater problem than Saddam Hussein.
Without giving a catalogue to the House of that particular leader's background, suffice it to say the nation that sacrificed most in terms of materiel and political prestige in this experience was the United States of America. It must be said that the United States of America has been the best friend of this country and we in turn are their best friend, but that gives us the right, too, to tell our best friends when we think they have bad breath.
One of the things that worries me about the United States of America and launching us into a compelling alliance in this experience is the fact that it has now embraced President Assad, the very same person who is directly responsible for the murder of those 200 U.S. marines in Lebanon. This must be said. I am not the minister. I do not have to be the diplomat but it must be said. We are dealing here with a very dangerous person who runs an autocratic government and who has demonstrated in the past that he has even a worse capacity than Saddam Hussein to deal with opponents and with enemies real or perceived. That alliance, because of his participation, is fraught with dangers.
I do not say this exclusively in terms of the United States, but I also say it as it relates to member states in the region, including perceived opponents such as Iran, which has gone through some amazing transformations in our public relations evaluation of who it is and what it is over the last six months. It is going to be difficult, but it
I do not know how a diplomat says to Assad: "We know who you are, where you came from, and we do not want to see that around any more". But that in effect is what I hope is said.
Second, I want to deal with the particular role of Jordan. I was particularly appreciative of the comments of the minister about not making a fast judgment on Jordan. I think that is essential, and I commend the minister for that.
I said on January 17, in my brief comments on the regional scene, that we should not rush to judge Jordan, that we will have a difference of opinion of where Jordan comes down in reality or in perception. The fact is Jordan must be a major player in the region and King Hussein must have the support of western nations in the fragile situation that he is in. We should not make judgments about a political response to populace clamouring on the street but understand that we have a role to play in maintaining that state as it is and as it evolves. It is not perfect.
The Saudis as well need to be gently nudged by a country such as ours-and our Prime Minister correctly suggested that the Saudis be allies of ours-that the fight was for human rights and against human rights violations by Iraq. The Saudis are also not very clean in terms of the same catalogue of definition that the Prime Minister used, that is Amnesty International, when he spoke to this House. The Saudis also have not a very good record with Amnesty International.
Dealing with Kuwait itself, if we pick up this morning's paper we discover that everything we said in terms of our definition of liberating a sovereign nation comes to a question about what we liberated in terms of loss of materiel and life and the consequences of that loss.
I will just use this one headline to illustrate my point from today's edition of The Globe and Mail: "Kuwaiti women struggle to tear off traditional chains". I would ask that the minister consider, on reflection, some subtle message perhaps to the Kuwaitis to understand that there were women in the Armed Forces who served in this country, there were women in that theatre who

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were prepared, on behalf of this country's commitment to the liberation of Kuwait, to risk their lives. I do not think it serves the long-term interests of women's commitment, equal with men, to risk their lives in a fight by the government and others for the liberation of a sovereign nation, to find out that they liberated an archaic system that does not recognize the rights of women. Just as an aside, also no votes for women.
I want to deal now with the arms issue. None of these things are said, by the way, as any criticism of the minister, and I mean that sincerely. I have the liberty of speaking on behalf of a third party which gives a lot of licence beyond the boundaries of diplomacy, and I recognize that.
I am impressed by the position taken by the government against the arms race, but I must reflect-and I do not mean this maliciously but sadly-on some of the facetious responses given to my colleagues by government members, not this minister, when questioned about ARMX and ARMX's role here in Canada. I would ask the government to reflect on that debate, quietly go through Hansard and look at that exchange. The worst predictions of that debate came true. I wish that had not happened.
The minister is to be commended for taking a strong position. My Liberal colleague clearly stated that the position is of course focused on powerful political entities, and that is that the big five in the Security Council who have been the big sellers. It is tough for an independent country like Canada to walk up to the big boys and say "knock it off".
This is more than an abstract problem. Here are some of the realities we have to deal with. During the last 15 years the Middle East has taken about one-third of all arms traded globally. Thirty nations, including Canada, sold Saddam Hussein more than $50 billion worth of weapons before he attacked Kuwait. Arab nations together have spent more than $150 billion on importing arms over the last 12 years, yet not one of these countries is confident of its security.
Just reflect on what that $150 billion could have done for Third World countries, for the hungry children that
the minister properly addressed some of his comments to. Just reflect on what that money could have done.
After recently receiving $3 billion from the gulf oil states and the U.S. for its assistance in pushing Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, Syria has ordered $1 billion worth of Scuds from North Korea, all of which will be able to hit Israel. It is a serious problem.
I conclude by reading this one paragraph: "The Bush administration has backed away from earlier demands that conventional arms control be a major objective for the post-war Middle East. Washington now plans to sell $25 billion of arms to the Middle East in 1991 alone. About 67 per cent of all U.S. weapons being sold in 1991 by the United States will go to the Middle East."
That is absolute madness. If I may express an opinion to our colleagues south of the border, that is an insult to the dead who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of Kuwait, only to find that some impelling economic reasons may be putting the U.S. government in the position of rearming the very same regions.
Having said that, I wish to address myself to the chronic problem of the State of Israel and its neighbours.
I am blessed with the same amount of ignorance of the nuances of trying to find an answer to that problem.
I do not have any more knowledge or any less than any other observer, but it seems to me-and I feel strongly about it-that it should be stated, if not evident, that Israel must look to some form of negotiations to deal with its internal and external security. It must expect and can demand the same international commitment that brought together 16 diverse nations to protect the integrity of the boundaries of Kuwait. It must ask for the same commitment from international communities to protect its sovereign boundaries as well.
Until that commitment is given fully, openly, and honestly to the State of Israel by all the players, negotiations that will reach a conclusion will not be possible.
While we get hung up on the nuances of who is to be at the table, while we walk on eggs concerned about expressing opinions of who should or should not be there, the basic reassurance that must be given to force an international debate around "where to from here" is
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a statement that the very commitment given by those 16 nations to protect the sovereign integrity of the borders of Kuwait must be given to protect the sovereign integrity of the borders of Israel, which were established by the United Nations the first time in history.
Having said that, I believe there will be a harvest of damage done to the western nations by the war, based on propaganda that we are not in control of. My colleague from the Liberal Party mentioned, in a very astute, brief comment, that we may have damaged our role as Canadians but still can give advice and peacekeeping.
Unfortunately I believe we have placed ourselves, through this experience, in the position of being lumped in with the rest of the western nations and of being viewed, frankly, as attempting to impose western hegemony on the region.
I hope that every effort is made by this government, and I think the minister has done it with his visit, not only to confirm the alliance but to set a distinct and separate pattern defining Canada. The minister is to be congratulated for taking this unilateral drive himself.
To separate Canada further, I would ask that this government propose a unilateral ban on the sale of arms from Canada as a demonstration backing up its position against the arms sale. A ban by Canada would be a powerful signal that we mean what we say.
My time is up and I would like to conclude with a comment concerning my constituents in the Esquimau naval base and the other military forces there. It is on record that I did not want to see this war take place. It is also on record in my speech that once the decision was made I hoped for a quick dispatch and early return. They have done us proud again. I do not like the circumstances they were placed in, but they have done us proud again. Every Canadian must feel a bit better today that we have an independent armed force that is attached directly to a parliamentary government. I thank those families and I thank those men and women who served us.
I say in conclusion I hope, like in most other wars, their service has not been in vain.


Mr. Berger:: Madam Speaker, I wondered if I might seek the consent of the House to put two brief questions to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.
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Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I am always anxious to answer questions, but I am respectful of the traditions of the House. There is a practice with regard to statements. I think, if we departed from it in this instance, the pressures would be great to do that in the future.
I will be appearing before the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade on Thursday next, and I will be pleased to deal with questions then.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Barry D. Moore: Madam Speaker, there have been negotiations between the government and opposition House leaders, and you will find there is unanimous consent for the following motion. Therefore, I move:
That, notwithstanding any provision of the Standing Orders, the
House shall meet at 1 p.m on Monday, March 18, 1991, and
proceed to consideration of the business of supply.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: We appreciate the generosity of the government in proposing this motion. We thank it for its munificence and we, of course, agree with it.


Ms. Black:: The New Democratic Party will agree with this.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Barry D. Moore: Madam Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Shall all questions stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.

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GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Barrett (p. 18509).
Madam Deputy Speaker:: We shall now proceed with questions and comments following the speech by the Minister for International trade.
I would like to take this opportunity to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, Government Orders will be extended today by 55 minutes, beginning at 3 p.m.


David Barrett: listened very closely to the minister of trade, as punishing as that may be. I thought I would address myself specifically to some of the comments he made.
The minister chose to use a columnist as the source of all of his rationale for supporting the free trade agreement. I do not know if that columnist has ever met a payroll or not, but I have chosen to respond by dealing with some of the business community that he claims are supporting the free trade agreement. I will read some of the quotes.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Let us hear them now.


David Barrett: No. Well, I know you are anxiously awaiting those comments. As a matter of fact, you leapt your feet, hoping that I would be given the floor to answer your concerns. And by the grace of goodness, I was.
I want to bring to the minister's attention a statement by Patrick Lavelle, the vice-president for Canadian auto parts maker, Magna International. He is not a columnist. He does not belong to the CLC. Why those gratuitous attacks on individually named people has a place in this debate, I do not know, but if that is what you choose to do, that is your decision.
I quote: "The government is becoming involved in the U.S.-Mexico negotiations for no pressing economic
reason, and with no idea of what it hopes to achieve" said Patrick Lavelle, a vice-president for Canadian auto parts maker, Magna International.
That was at a conference on free trade and the possibility of talks with Mexico. He goes on, and I will read one more paragraph: "'I am tired of Canadian politicians and members of the business community taking risks with the Canadian economy without knowing what they are doing and why', he told the forum on the implications of trade talks for Canada". That is not Shirley Carr. That is not Bob White. That is not the CLC.
Will the minister get up and personally attack this member of the business community for expressing an opinion that is contrary to his and the government's, or does he reserve his personal comments only for opposition members who could be defined as being identified with the trade union movement. These are specious comments attacking personalities instead of dealing with substance.
The next comment I wish to make in this brief time is to deal with the minister's comments about the Royal Bank and using the Royal Bank's latest report as an authority. Can you imagine the government reduced to asking one of the Big Five to be its authority? I want to expose for the minister that not only does the bank overcharge on its credit cards, but it also talks with a forked tongue with some time in between.


David Barrett: Yes. And I want to bring this to the attention of the minister so that he will not be misled again, because one must pity the minister when he picks a source that he does not have enough research on.


David Barrett: Yes. The bank said in the January 1988 statement endorsing the free trade agreement that "this agreement will serve to improve the allocation of resources, increase the number and quality of jobs, and help in controlling inflation. As a consequence, consumers will benefit, employees will benefit, and employers will benefit." That was in January 1988.
Now I come to the report the minister quotes from. In February 1991, two and a half years later, the review said that "it is useful to remember that none of the serious


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: No.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: We all pity the minister.
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impact studies of the FTA ever projected dramatic job gains or losses from that agreement".
The bank is talking hogwash. Before the agreement shows any evidence, it says there are going to be great results. After two and a half years, when no results are evident, it says that no one said that there were going to be great results. Come on, Mr. Minister, you've got to find a heck of a lot better source than that. And I have been sticking strictly to business quotes.
I have just a couple more things.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: I point out to the hon. member that as we are in the ten minutes of questions and comments. Five minutes have gone by, he may want to allow the minister the rest of the time to answer.


David Barrett: That's why I am winding up. As a last comment-


Madam Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member will please wind up.


David Barrett: -take a full vote and also read the great pamphlet of 200 years ago called "Common Sense".


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, nobody wants to cut off the hon. member because it helps us. The longer he talks, the more it helps us across the country.
It was not only a columnist I cited; it was the Royal Bank, the Canada West Foundation, and a number of other impartial sources. Then the hon. member got up and cited Mr. Patrick Lavelle, a partisan Liberal, and neglects to mention that the Association of Auto Parts Manufacturers has given their strong support to U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade negotiations. The association that he cites is on the record supporting the proposed U.S.-Canada-Mexico negotiations.
The hon. gentleman mentioned research. It is time for his party to do a little research into the labour situation in Mexico. We have heard a lot of comment from them with respect to the terrible competition that we are going to have from Mexico because of their lower wages and unwarranted attacks of the labour framework and legislation, and environmental allegations in connection with the environment.
I point out to the House that if the hon. members opposite would do some research, they would see that of 140 international instruments on the environment, Mexico has ratified 27. It has adhered to the 1985 Vienna
Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the 1987 Montreal protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer. They passed extensive domestic legislation and environmental standards. They still have difficulties in implementation and enforcement because of their financial limitations. They are a developing country with a large foreign debt.
I point out that during his official visit to Mexico last year the Prime Minister signed an environmental co-operation agreement between Canada and Mexico and we are implementing several small scale but useful bilateral economic co-operation projects in Mexico.
With respect to labour conditions-I hope this will be of interest to the hon. gentleman who has obviously done no research into this situation-Mexico has ratified 61 of more than 170 International Labour Organization conventions, including eight of what are known as the 11 core conventions, for example, freedom of association, abolition of forced labour, equal remuneration, and non-discrimination.
This compares to the United States which has ratified only seven of these ILO conventions, none of them core, and Canada which has adhered to 26, four of which are core. Mexico actually has a better record than either the United States or Canada in adhering to international conventions dealing with labour matters. One has to wonder about all these attacks on Mexico and unjustified aspersions with reference to the labour situation in Mexico.
In addition, the 1969 Inter-American Convention on Human Rights contains a basic freedom of association provision. That instrument was ratified by Mexico. It has not been ratified by the United States, nor has it been ratified by Canada, so when we start to examine the actual situation in Mexico with respect to legislation and the adherence to international conventions, both with respect to the environment and to labour matters, Mexico actually has quite a fair record. They doubtless have difficulties in implementation because of its economic situation, because of the fact it is undeveloped, and its rapidly increasing population, now 85 million people. Mexico is trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps.
The same thing applies to the criticism of the so-called Maquiladora areas which, in the eyes of the hon. personages opposite, are supposed to be very retrograde.

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In the opinion of Mexicans it is far better to obtain entry level jobs which give them some income, experience, and hope for the future than to have no jobs at all. The position of the hon. members of the New Democratic Party is that in Mexico they should not be allowed to have jobs at all. They should not have Maquiladora programs and the like. They should not be allowed to initiate programs to give themselves some hope.
Does the hon. gentleman want to ask a question?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: No, it's too late, but we want you to stop.


John Carnell Crosbie: Is it too late? Well, I was just trying to answer the hon. member for the New Democratic Party.
In short, there are many reasons for us to enter into this negotiation. I am glad to have the support of the Official Opposition, at least we think we have their support, but one can never tell whether the Official Opposition supports something or does not support it. Their mugs are always on one side, their wumps are on the other. Now the wump side of the Liberal Party wants to speak and I am quite prepared to sit down.
We are going to hear some tortured arguments now. Let us see if we can all figure out what side the Liberals are on with reference to a U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement.


Mr. Bob Speller (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak on the motion put forward by the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca which reads:
That this House calls upon the government to avoid a worsening
of the social and economic hardship caused by the Canada-United
States Free Trade Agreement by withdrawing from the current trade
negotiations between the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Even a year ago today few of us would have predicted that we would be in this House discussing a trilateral trade deal with Mexico. This is an issue that has come upon us very quickly but its seriousness demands that we examine our options fully. While time constraints mean that we must react quickly, we must be careful not to over-react, careful not to react with knee-jerk divisiveness.
Given that the motion before us provides an opportunity to examine the issue of a North American free trade
agreement, I welcome its introduction into the House. However, I find the substance of the motion presents great difficulty.
The motion speaks of the worsening of the social and economic hardship caused by the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. I agree. The motion then goes on to prescribe a recipe to avoid the worsening of our social and economic ills, that we withdraw from this current trilateral trade negotiation.
The motion before us, given the reality of today, however harsh given the six years of Toiy rule, I believe is a flight into fantasy.
We can rightfully say that if we were in power we would not have the trade agreement we have now. We would not have signed a deal that gave away so much and brought so little. We would not have stacked the deck against Canadians, and then proceeded to strip away our ability to become better trained, better equipped, more competitive with soaring interest rates, retraining cuts, education cuts, R and D cuts, and science and technology cuts. We would not have been in the jam we are in today.
We can all indulge in "what if" in this House until we are blue in the face and until the last Canadian has stopped listening. The fact of the matter is that we are not the ruling party. The economic mismanagement that the ruling party has brought us is real and demands our attention here in the House. It will not be resolved by talking about "what if" and withdrawing from reality.
The fact of the matter is Canada is at the table. Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with this Minister for International Trade and this Prime Minister who sold out Canadians under the Canada-U.S. free trade deal. Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with this government for at least the next year and a half.
The Liberal Party has called for an election, because we feel Canadians need a new direction. The fact of the matter is that we are stuck with this government, and it is the members opposite who will be responsible for forwarding Canada's position in these negotiations. Those negotiations will go on.
Given that reality, it seems quite logical and in the best interests of all Canadians not to waste valuable time in the House of Commons on a flight into fantasy.
March 15, 1991

We need to talk about what these negotiations really mean. What are Canada's negotiating options? Who are the potential winners and losers? What should be on the table, and what must not be on the table? How do these negotiations fit into Canada's trading plans for the future?
What is really unfortunate is that neither the NDP nor the Conservative Party seem willing in this House today to deal with these very important questions. On one hand, we have the NDP saying: "No, without question. Don't even consider it." On the other hand, we have the Conservative Party saying: "Yes, without question. No study, no strategy. Just get a deal."
I consider both of these positions to be highly irresponsible. Both parties have allowed their worn ideologies and specific constituencies to push them into dead ends. The NDP says that it is against trade talks. What is it for? How does it propose to protect Canada's interests in this harsh world of today. Is its answer to shut our eyes, to cover our ears, to pretend that it is not happening? What is its alternative?
We in the Liberal Party, have always believed in freer trade, in multilateral trade. The Liberal Party believes that the Conservative government should have attempted to expand Canada's trade in the western hemisphere on a multilateral basis rather than, as it has done, on a piecemeal basis.
The world is moving towards trading blocs, whether we like it or not. The Conservative government has been slow to realize this reality and therefore has shown no vision with respect to Canada's trade in the western hemisphere. As a result, Canada has not been the master of its own timetable.
Canada's trade must be expanded in the western hemisphere on a multilateral and comprehensive basis rather than on a haphazard and piecemeal basis.
Our Conservative colleagues, who seem caught between the pages of their first year economics textbook, are blind to the economic and social hardships they have brought this country. Their trade vision for our country ended with the signing of the free trade agreement, and they seem dejected by the fact that Canada is no longer the apple of the American eye, and that the U.S. wants to disturb our cosy little bilateral relationship. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Conservatives have
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been overtaken by reality. Even the Conservative dominated Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade stated in its recent report on this deal: "We are frankly amazed by the lack of detailed economic analysis of the costs and benefits of a North American free trade deal."
Canadians need answers. I represent a riding that has been hit hard by recent plant closings, small business bankruptcies and many lay-offs, a riding that could very well be vulnerable to a North American free trade agreement. What my constituents are saying to me is that they are extremely concerned about these job losses and they are concerned about their future. They know that the Canadian government has mishandled the Canadian economy and they feel that the free trade agreement is hurting, rather than helping. They hear that our ills are for the good of economic restructuring, whatever that means, but they question whether it really has to happen this way.
Now they hear that Canada is involving itself in a new deal with Mexico. They are concerned about having to compete with a country that has lower wages, lower social and environmental standards. There were many concerns voiced by groups appearing before the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade on both sides of this issue.
The people, like the people in Haldimand-Norfolk, want to know what is going on. Does this government have a plan? If it does, what is that plan? They want to know how is it that the international trade minister can one day announce that Canada will participate and that the free trade agreement will not be touched by any trilateral agreement and the next day change his mind and say that changes may have to be made to the free trade agreement.
This Conservative intransigence on this issue could have devastating repercussions for not only my riding, but for ridings all across Canada. This government gave away many things to secure a free trade agreement. Our country made major concessions to gain "preferential treatment in the U.S. market". Surely if the Americans turn around and try to cut another deal with another country, we stand to lose the very thing that this

March 15, 1991
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government was willing so well to give up, that special relationship, that preferential access.
You might think that a reasonable Canadian government would go to the table and say: "Look, we have problems with the free trade agreement and we are losing preferential access. We supposedly had a bilateral deal. Let's correct the errors we made". But to do so this government will have to come to terms with the errors that it made in negotiating the free trade agreement, because until it does, the Canadian public will continue to have no confidence in this government's ability to protect Canadian interests in any trilateral negotiations.
Canadians have learned from this government's bungling of the free trade negotiations, they have learned from this government's refusal to make good on its election promise of adjustment assistance for those workers who have been thrown out of their jobs because of the free trade deal. Canadians have learned from this government's mistaken pursuit of economic policies that have only served to hinder Canadians' ability to compete. They have learned from this government's failure to institute necessary educational and training programs and to make Canadians more productive. They have learned from this government's stubborn adherence to the high interest rate policy, high dollar policy, which has crippled Canadian businesses in the face of increasing competition from the United States. Canadians have learned from the mistakes of this government.
The question is: can this government learn from the unnecessary hardship it has brought upon Canadians?
The Liberal Party believes, given Canada's participation in the current trilateral negotiations, the Canadian government must use these talks to correct the mistakes it made during the initial free trade discussions with the United States. It must understand that free trade does not have to mean the lowest common denominator in wages and environmental standards. It must take control of our country's trade agenda, actively pursue our interests, not cower behind American initiatives or those threats from large multinational corporations. It must take this opportunity to reopen the existing Canada- U.S. Free Trade Agreement and in doing so, it must consult Canadians and make explicit goals it seeks in these negotiations so that Canadians can decide if these goals really reflect Canadian national interests.
It must seek to promote multilateral trading relations and mitigate the unsatisfactory nature of this current free trade agreement.
It must negotiate an agreement which could be expanded to cover Canada's trading partners throughout the western hemisphere.
It must outline comprehensive adjustment programs for Canadian labour and industry to be undertaken prior to the conclusion of an agreement.
It must guarantee the protection of Canada's social, cultural and regional development programs and make explicit statements of Canada's minimal position prior to subsidy negotiations.
It must make it explicit in the provisions of any trilateral deal the protection of environmental and social standards, including labour standards.
The Liberal Party intends to hold this government accountable for these goals in the current negotiations.
The Liberal Party has never been opposed to the concept of freer trade. That is why the Liberal Party has launched a western hemispheric initiative, intended to promote liberalized trade and address concerns such as human rights and the environment.
If Canada is to prosper in this new decade, it will require political leadership that is imaginative, creative, flexible and innovative, all qualities in a dangerously short supply with this present government.
I do not have to remind this House that Canada is a trading nation and a strong trading nation. Our ability to enjoy a decent quality of life in the nineties will be directly dependent on how successful we are in marketing our competitive products around the world. Those of us who have lived our lives in southwestern Ontario, the bread-basket of Canada, are acutely aware of the fact that in order for an economy to be competitive it must be productive.
Under the Conservative rule, Canada has been steadily falling behind all of its major competitors in productivity growth. The only major industrialized country that has experienced a lower rate of productivity growth than ours is the United States. Our productivity performance and our ability to maintain decent standards of living are inextricably linked.
March 15, 1991

The free trade agreement is a flawed strategy. The Conservatives have linked our fortunes to the only advanced industrial country with even lower rates of growth in productivity than ourselves and investment in infrastructure and standard of living much lower than our own.
We must articulate and implement a trade policy that links us to the emerging markets of the future.
Canada and the United States have also placed second last and last respectively in the rate of growth of income per person. Little wonder that Canadians are upset.
Canadians will not be productive or competitive with punishing interest rates and an artificially high dollar.
Canada's real interest rates are almost twice as high as the U.S. rates. This means that it costs a business in Simcoe, in my riding, roughly twice as much to borrow money as it does someone in Buffalo. These rates are stifling investment in new plants and equipment and they are also keeping our Canadian dollar artificially high, making it increasingly difficult for our exporters to compete. Ontario manufacturers are particularly hard hit by our unrealistically high dollar.
Rates have climbed to the point where ordinary Canadians have stopped spending. Our businesses are refusing to invest in new plants and equipment. By choking off badly needed investment, we prevent our industries from achieving the productivity gains needed to stay competitive.
A trade deal with the U.S. and Mexico is not the panacea the government would have us believe. Canada will not be productive if we continue to fall behind technologically. By any number of statistical measures, our technological competitiveness in the world has dropped sharply under this government. In order to be technologically competitive, Canadians will have to be creative in the way we finance, develop, and use technology-
The Tories have watched the pool of start up capital for high technology in Canada dry up and have done nothing about it. Our government should be playing leadership roles in helping shift private sector financing out of mergers and acquisitions and into our industries of the future.
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The biggest single generator of research and development in this country is in fact the federal government itself. Its laboratories are stocked full of world-class scientists doing outstanding work. Much of this research could be transformed into products and processes that would form the basis of new job-creating, profit-making businesses that could compete in this new emerging economy.
What we do not do is provide our government scientists with the private sector based expertise and the financial incentives that they need to turn their discoveries into businesses. Our best government scientists need support from our partners in the private sector, not lay-off notices from the Conservatives.
Canadians will not be competitive if one-quarter of our population cannot read or write. A society that has a large and growing percentage of its population at the margins of economic life due to an inability to communicate effectively is not only an unjust society, it is a society with a limited economic future.
Canadians will not be competitive if our environmental and competition policies are weak and ineffectual. The Conservatives have encouraged our economy to become more concentrated, but not more competitive. In doing so, they jeopardize Canada's competitive future, as our economy gets concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Canada needs a dynamic, fiercely competitive, private sector capable of taking on all newcomers. Canadians will not be able to compete if we depend on the free trade agreement to secure our place in world markets.
It is probably true that, to a large extent, the world is solidifying into a number of large regional trading blocks. One way or another, we will continue to share a close trade relationship with our neighbour to the south and with Mexico, but it would be a grave mistake to believe as the Conservatives do that a Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement or a Canada-Mexico free trade agreement secures our trading future. It would be a graver mistake, as the NDP believe, for Canada to stay isolationist. We cannot be an island among ourselves.

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Mac Harb: Mr. Speaker, first I want to start by congratulating the hon. member on a presentation very, very well done.
I was particularly interested in some of the comments he made about the state of our economic situation in Canada and relating it to the area of research and development in the area of education.
I just want to stress the importance of that statement, especially when we have right now in Canada over 30 per cent of our youth who are trying to finish high school and cannot, for whatever reason. They drop out before they reach the age of 18.
My colleague also indicated the rate of illiteracy at 25 per cent. I would like to add to that. The latest statistic by Statistics Canada has indicated that over 38 per cent of the Canadian population are in fact functionally illiterate when it comes to literacy as we know it.
By the year 2000, we will see that there is going to be more and more demand for service-based industries. In other words, we are going to see a work force that has to be highly educated. We will need the work force to have at least a high school level of education and, in some cases, even university level education.
What we have seen over the past decade and will be seeing in the next decade more and more is our industry fading away and our service sector increasing. If you compare that to Japan, it is very sad because the reverse is true. In Japan, for example, they have approximately 10 times more engineers and scientists as we have in Canada, while we have 20 times more lawyers than they have in Japan. That will give us a clear indication of where we are and where our competitors are at.
In my view there is one thing which is lacking in this whole debate. I listened to the Minister for International Trade's presentation and I did not see him putting a lot of emphasis on investment in our human resources. In my view, if we are to be internationally compatible and if we are to be at the leading edge in terms of trade and technology, we have to start investing in our human resources. That is something which we are not seeing enough of or in which we are not seeing this government take leadership.
The latest budget is a clear indication of the failure of the government to deal with this issue when it has cut transfer payments to post-secondary education, when it has cut transfer payments to the provinces in many other areas such as health care and education. In my view, if we are really to deal with the issue of trade and technology, we have start moving from strength to strength rather than moving from weakness to weakness.
I would like in closing to again congratulate the hon. member and ask him if he can elaborate a little further on the research and development and talk a little bit about the record of the government on this issue, since it promised in 1984 to double the rate of investment in research and development and so far we have not seen anything of that.


Robert (Bob) Speller: Mr. Speaker, I will just take half a second to thank my hon. friend for the question because I want to give my colleagues in the NDP an opportunity to ask me a question on that. I think I brought out in my speech the problems with a government that does not put enough emphasis on R and D and a government that puts more emphasis on these trading agreements to promote Canada's future. I do not think that is the direction. As I outlined, I hope that the proposals that the Liberal Party has put forward on this issue will be addressed by the government.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, I would ask a number of questions of the hon. member particularly concerning the position of the Liberal Party with regard to free trade. There seems to have been a dramatic reversal that has taken place within the Liberal Party since the change of leadership.
The former leader, the right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, said that the fight against free trade was the fight of his life. Now, I think what they have as far as the Liberals are concerned is the flight of their life. They are fleeing from the position of the right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra. All of a sudden we have them no longer talking about "if they came to power", which they will not do, that they are going to cancel the free trade deal. They are now starting to talk about "We have to make one, two or three little changes to the free trade deal".
The Liberals have started to back away. All of a sudden the corporations which have been financing the Tories are starting to find that the Tories have driven the economy into rack and ruin, so they are now looking around for somebody else that they can use as lackeys
March 15, 1991

and of course there is always the Liberals. They have known that for years, so they say: "We will finance them''. Of course, they say: "If we are going to support and finance you, you have got to have some understanding. The multinationals are telling you that we have got to be protected. We do not want anybody tinkering around too much with that free trade deal because it has been very beneficial for us. We can move our capital down to the States, we can move it into cheaper wage zones, we can move it down to Mexico. We can maximize our profits. We do not really care if it hurts the Canadian worker. We do not care if there is a harmonization with the United States".
All of a sudden the Liberal Party is now backing away from its very hard fought claims that it was utterly opposed to anything like the free trade deal, that it would scrap the free trade deal, that it would cancel the free trade deal. That is not what it is now saying.
The Liberals are now saying: "We will take a look at it and tinker". Now, all of a sudden when it comes to the Mexican free trade deal they are starting to say: "Maybe we should be at the negotiating table. Maybe we should sit down and look at the benefits of a free trade deal with Mexico. Let us get involved".
Can the member explain why the fight of their life has become the flight of their life?


Robert (Bob) Speller: Mr. Speaker, quite frankly we would not have been in the position we are today with free trade had the NDP not faltered during the last election. Had the NDP not questioned whether or not this was really the fight of its life, we would not have had free trade today. There would not have been that many Conservative members over there had the NDP not had a position.
I want to tell the hon. member what Canadians are saying out there today. What they are saying is that they do not want political parties just to oppose. What Canadians are saying is that they want a party to show a position. That is exactly what I have outlined in this House today: the position of the Liberal Party with regard to trade and how we will move forward.
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The Conservative Party that is being handled by the CEOs is saying: "Look, we want to be involved in North America, an island upon itself, trade with North America".
The NDP is saying: "Look, we want to be an island upon ourselves in Canada". What the Liberal Party is doing is moving out, moving forward, into the multilateral field, as did former Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau and Lester B. Pearson who moved Canada forward into the world arena.
I want to tell the NDP that it will not continue by coming out and consistently attacking, attacking, attacking, without bringing forward any alternatives. I listened to the hon. member who put forward the motion today. The hon. member took two minutes out of a twenty-minute speech to talk about Mexico. The rest of the time he lambasted the free trade agreement.
Unfortunately the reality of the situation is that we have free trade. We would not have had it, had we become the government, but unfortunately that is the case and unfortunately they are the government and they are going to be there for the next year and a half.
What Canadians are telling us to do as opposition members, as people representing our constituencies in this House, is to outline our alternatives for them, where we want to see this country go when we become the government.
I challenge my friends in the NDP to do the same: to stay away from just representing the unions, to represent all Canadians and to put forward the views of all Canadians on this matter. I have done it. My party has done it. I challenge my friends in the NDP to do the same.


Mr. Steve Butland (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, I congratulate you on your temporary promotion to the Chair. I have quite enjoyed today's debate with the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca and even the Minister for International Trade. Although his message is one of total lack of content, we do appreciate the humour.
Also we are appreciative that we have today the final, definitive Liberal stand this week on free trade and the Mexico round of free trade. I am glad that this has been spelled out and will remain the Liberal policy at least until Monday.

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It is a great privilege to second this motion, and may I say that the NDP speaks as one voice. There is no divisiveness in our party with regard to the Mexico- United States-Canada free trade agreement. We have been consistent and we have spoken with one voice.
The member for Haldimand-Norfolk suggested that the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca did not speak about Mexico, so I indeed want to address his concerns. We had already devised this situation that the member previous would speak about the free trade agreement and I would tiy to speak somewhat about Mexico.
I want to spend a few moments on the Mexican government, which we believe was elected fraudulently. It has no mandate from the Mexican people to enter into any kind of trade agreement. There was no understanding by the Mexican people of what is happening to them. I think it is widely accepted that basically Mexico masquerades as a democracy, but it is indeed a dictatorship. There are human rights violations. People who oppose the government are harassed, even killed. There is economic liberalization but there is not political liberalization.
It was suggested to me just yesterday, in speaking to a professor from a Mexican university, that electoral reform has actually worsened. It was suggested that even if in the next national election the ruling party achieved only 35 per cent of the electorate's vote, it would still maintain control of over 50 per cent of the Parliament of Mexico. That is not acceptable.
It was also suggested to us that the only advantage that Mexico has to provide the industries of the rest of North America is a low wage advantage. The business community in Mexico is, I am told, arrogant. It suggests that the lifestyle of the ordinary Mexican should not be tampered with: "They like that lifestyle, they enjoy it, so don't make us any better off. Let me sit around pool and drive my Mercedes, but let those people enjoy the Maquiladora life". It is a wonderful life, Mr. Speaker.
As far as the elections go, the member for Trinity- Spadina is trying to monitor municipal elections in Mexico and Mexico says: "No, our law doesn't allow any monitoring of elections in Mexico. It would not be appropriate". The member for Trinity-Spadina is not a threatening man. We would think that the Mexicans would greet him with open arms and say: "By all means look at these honest elections that we have." But the
fact is that the elections have been held in various provinces of Mexico and the opposition party has won elections but not been able to control the municipal councils.
What is it like in Maquiladora? No one has really addressed that. They ask: "What have you got against Mexicans, you New Democrats?" We ask the government: "What have you got against Mexicans?" I throw it back to the government.
I think it is only appropriate to tell a contemporary story-the Maquiladora has been in existence for several years now, I think eight to ten years-about life in the low wage boom towns of Mexico. At five o'clock on a December morning in a two-room shack adjacent to a strip of American owned factories, seven young Mexicans rise to go to work. What do they live in? The shack was built by the family from materials discarded by nearby factories. Wooden pallets become the frame and roof. Cardboard boxes used to ship garage door opener parts to Mexico are now the family's interior walls. Looming right beside the fortress is the actual garage door opener factory; it is the Chamberlain Group from Chicago.
The president says: "We are the cost leaders in our industry". We are not surprised that they are the cost leaders. He goes on to talk about it but does not account for the hundreds of toxic chemical drums discarded by the factories and reused for drinking water by families who cannot read the warnings printed in English. That is what it is like in the Maquiladora.
What does the one American corporate individual say? "I don't see the role of corporate America as being philanthropists about the world. They came down here to benefit themselves and secondarily to benefit Mexico through these jobs".
What do the families say? "People come with the illusion of making money, not to become rich but to make some money. But they cannot live on their salary and there is no house for them to live in. You see that a lot of people get disillusioned and leave".
How many of them leave? If there is going to be such excellent jobs for Mexicans, why would they leave to the tune of a 61 per cent turnover every six months and a 77 per cent turnover in these industries over the course of one year? Is that really the good life? They will move on to another industry for a matter of a few cents per hour,
March 15, 1991

which will augment perhaps their 80-cent an hour wage. That is what it is really like in Maquiladora.
Mexico is going to be forced to negotiate a deal from a position of weakness. There is unrest in the country. It is debt ridden. There is pollution beyond our comprehension. We believe it has a corrupt government. We say that the unions are in collaboration with the government; they are not there for the benefit of the workers. The incomes of ordinary Mexicans have gone down 50 per cent in the last four years.
There is an old Mexican saying: "It is too bad for Mexico that we are so far from God but so close to the United States."
The Prime Minister went down to Mexico and said that the Canadian free trade agreement created 250,000 jobs. He is not saying that in Canada, but he is saying it down there. It is a case of misinformation.
As far as the environmental laws that the Minister for International Trade cited, they do have the toughest environmental laws in the world, but there is no money, there is no personnel, and there are no teeth in the implementation of those environmental laws. They can write all the laws they want, but if they do not enforced they are in fact not laws whatsoever.
What do environmentalists say as opposed to the Americans? The Americans have already said that there cannot be environmental discussions with this agreement, that it is impossible, that it will drive people away. Environmentalists make a very valid point. Fixing environmental problems now in a trade agreement is a lot cheaper than fixing those problems in the future. We know from our own history that when we try to repair the damage it is more costly and sometimes the will is not there.
The promises of free trade, I remember well, and I am sure all members remember them in their constituency during the campaign. I still have a clipping here: "Speak out. Up to 1,500 jobs in jeopardy in downtown Sault Ste. Marie." "With free trade we are going to have more jobs in industry. We are going to have more jobs in secondary industry. We are going to have more jobs in stores and shopping malls".
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What the Conservatives did not say is that they would be in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in the United States. One of the the major reasons their jobs are in jeopardy is this agreement that we have been in for a couple of years. There is ever more danger of entering into another agreement. These promises turned out to be absolutely false.
With respect to adjustment programs for workers, the Prime Minister said that with the free trade agreement the government would provide the finest adjustment programs in the world. We now know that there were none. It commissioned the de Grandpre report called Adjusting to Win. Well, we lost and there were no adjustments. What good recommendations were in it, I do not believe were followed.
Access to the American market through the free trade agreement was the carrot. The steel industry in Canada said: "This is what we want. We will have access and, if they harass us, we will bring it to the panel dispute and everything will be solved". Recent history proves that to be also false.
It is nigh on impossible-and I know the member for Burlington will agree with me-to win a ruling when the language of these panels, with American law, suggests that relief should not be delayed if sufficient evidence exists for concluding that the threat of injury is real and injury is imminent. It says: "There may not be any definite, distinct problem right now, but just in case there might be in the future, we are going to bring a countervail duty against you".
All the rulings read the same. They are against us. What would Mexico hope to gain as far as access to the American market is concerned?
Here is a letter that was put on the door of an industry, Bovie Manufacturing in Lindsay, Ontario:
Your strike vote last night means that as soon as you go out, the Mexicans will get your jobs immediately.
You also lose 8-10 weeks more wages as you cannot apply for UI while on strike.
In order to apply for UI you must inform us by registered mail that you quit our employ, then wait a further 6-8 weeks before your claim starts.
However, if you work until the end of our coverall and lab coat contract, which will be approximately the end of April, and we lay you off, the waiting time is only two weeks.

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Remember, if you strike, there will be no job for you to come back
to.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: That was a couple of years ago.


Steve Butland: I do not believe so. This is a very recent edition. June 1989.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Yes. It is not new.


Steve Butland: It is relatively new. As far as Liberals go, that is recent research.
I want to talk about a case in point-there is nothing like an actual scenario-of a consideration by an American firm in Buffalo called Trico which makes windshield wipers. The president of the firm said: "We are not being profitable enough and perhaps we have to look at Mexico. Let's go down to Mexico and take advantage of the low wages there. Perhaps the company will be more profitable".
Naturally, the people in Buffalo got quite upset. They said: "We have already lost all sorts of industry. Please, Trico, don't leave us." Then the president said: "Let's have some studies. I will co-operate with any studies that you can come up with. Let's take a look at whether or not I can be competitive here in Buffalo".
The studies went on, but the decision was already made. Indeed he was going to Mexico. He had a twin city operation between Texas and Mexico. Off they went to Mexico.
The suggestion was that it was making windshield wipers there and the only consideration was the low wages. The studies proved that when it should have been thinking of capital investment to make its wiper systems technologically superior and in the long run cheaper to produce than those of its competitors, it chose the easy way out by relying on cheap labour both for assembly and fabrication to resolve its problems.
A quick fix sometimes will be the choice. Assembling for Development is perhaps the most recent book written on the Maquiladora experiment. It is no longer an experiment because I believe there are 500,000 Mexicans employed in that border area. Very soon it will not be a border Maquiladora, but it will spread to all of Mexico with the displacement of one million to one and a half million Mexican peasant farmers who have known no other lifestyle.
Will they be retrained? Certainly not because Mexico cannot afford that. So off they will go to the nearest Maquiladora. What kind of life will that be?
The whole game has changed. There are more and more pressures upon Canada from multinational corporations that say: "We cannot afford our elaborate social welfare system. Something has to give". That is one area where I think the multinationals are saying: "That is where Canadians should give". We do not want to accept that.
I want to quote someone who should have been the president-elect of Mexico and who hopefully will be the next president of Mexico, Mr. Cardenas, from a speech in New York in February 1991. We identify very closely with what this gentleman said: "It is absolutely inadmissible that an international division of labour between the three countries assigns Mexico the role of a permanent supplier of cheap labour. Raising Mexican wage levels and working conditions in the general direction of American or Canadian standards instead of systematically lowering our salaries and incomes to attract reluctant investors is a paramount reason for pursuing new forms of economic integration".
I want to talk about a social charter, which I think this party endorses and espouses and, I think, Mr. Cardenas espouses. We see no problem with this at all; that any agreement, should there ever be one, should address this. We know full well that it will not be addressed under the aegis of the American trade negotiators or by the Canadian side as well.
The existing disparities among the three economies imply that a substantive, central objective of these negotiations should be the gradual but decisive standardization of trade related norms. First and foremost among these must be a social charter ensuring that workers in the three countries enjoy the same real-not merely on paper-work site conditions, collective bargaining rights, legal framework and occupational safety and health standards in order to avoid the exploitation of Mexicans and present unfair competition to their American and Canadian counterparts. Wages cannot be decreed into uniformity, but the conditions under which they are established and the framework in which labour and management relations take place can be harmonized. The concept is, let us not bring down our standards, let
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us raise the Mexican standards. I do not think anyone should have a problem with that.
I know the government always gets very hostile when we bring up plant closures in this country, but I have a veritable litany. I quite agree that many of them, perhaps, are not directly related to free trade, but at least we provide a list. The government maintains that it has created an endless number of jobs but it has never provided a definitive list.
After two years, we still have not measured or made an attempt to measure, the success or lack of success of the agreement with the United States. I understand there was a model for measurement put together by Informe-trica. I do not believe it has been acted on and, if it has been, certainly I do not think the results have been tabled.
With that, I believe I am just about out of time. To end, workers cannot be the sacrificial lambs on the altar of a North American free trade agreement. The adjustments we had under free trade with the United States were dramatic and we believe that they will be even more dramatic when we have a trilateral trade agreement among the three countries.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: I would like my hon. friend to comment on one of my concerns in this whole question of the social security network in Canada.
During the negotiations concerning the free trade deal, the Tories kept maintaining that there would be no threat to our social security system, that there would be no harmonization with the American system and that there would be no levelling of it.
Since the introduction of free trade, we have had a clawback of old age pensions, a clawback of family allowances and we have had repeated attacks on our national social security programs. The accumulative effect of cutbacks in federal transfer payments for post-secondary education now amount to just under $5,000 per student, some of which were started by the Liberal government, of course, in 1981-82.
In the health care system, the accumulated effect of the cutbacks now account for $29 billion. What is happening, of course, is that our health care and post-secondary education systems are eroding.
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All we have to do is listen to the anguish of the people of Newfoundland this week, when they realized that basic health care is no longer going to be a reality in that province, with the closure of 360 acute care beds and the firing of 300 nurses. This government maintained that there would be no impact. With the free trade deal, there was no understanding that we would have to harmonize, that we would have to bring our social services and social security network down to the level of those of the United States. But it is happening.
My fear is that all of a sudden we will be told that now we have to harmonize with Mexico. There is no post-secondary education, there is not even public school education in large parts of Mexico. There are not even basic sanitary services available in health care. There is not even basic physician services available to much of the population.
I would like the hon. member to comment on what he feels would be the impact of getting involved in an attempt to harmonize our social service programs with those of Mexico.


An hon. member:: Madam Speaker, can we try the rule of relevance?


Steve Butland: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the very concise and insightful question of my hon. colleague.
As far as the social security programs in this country are concerned, of course, let us remember that the free trade agreement was going to enhance the programs, not diminish them Remember the old story: "I would never lie to my mother". I always said: "Well, you did not lie to her, but you gave her an awful kick". Old age security has, indeed, as a result of the clawback, been reduced.
The member is up on his statistics and I guess the proof is there.
The member across says it is the old sparrow trick. Everything is unrelated. Well, the fact remains that social programs are under attack and we ask if that is purely coincidental? I doubt it very much. It is just too fortuitous to be credible.
The member from Souris points out quite definitively and statistically what is happening to this country. Rather than asking me the question-perhaps, I might be biased, but I doubt it-the member should ask a Canadian on the street whether he thinks the social programs

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in this country are under siege. I am sure that he or she would answer in the positive.


Hon. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Madam Speaker, I thought I could not be amazed any more about the inaccuracies that would be used about the free trade debate, but this last exchange between the two hon. gentlemen from the New Democratic Party has convinced me that there is no depth beyond which some people will go to try to link anything-anything, to the free trade agreement.
In that last exchange there was not even a shred of an attempt to make the linkage between the demise in government's funding of services in tough economic times and the free trade agreement-not even a shred of an attempt to link them logically. There was simply the bald assertion that because there has been constraint in government funding it is ipso facto a consequence of the free trade agreement. Just simply stated. They do not even bother any more making these outrageous claims in this House, which have the effect of scaring folks improperly. They make those claims now and do not even bother, according to the New Democratic Party, with even attempting to make it look logical. They just say it.
That is one of the most irresponsible things I have ever heard said in this place and I have heard many.


An hon. member:: Shame.


John William Bosley: In a sense, I guess it should not surprise me that my good friends in the New Democratic Party, and I certainly count the member from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca among them, continue this battle.
Let us be under no illusions about what the purposes are here. The motion before us talks specifically about, if I could quote it: "a worsening of the social and economic hardship caused by the Canada-United States free trade agreement." I will come back to that, but I want to point out only to begin with that we should be under no illusions that it is the specific agreement the New Democratic Party is opposed to. It is not. It is consistently, and on the record, opposed to any form of free trade with anybody.
It will now claim the proof that that is not true is that they are supporters of the managed free trade agreement known as the auto pact. Those of us who have been through this debate long enough-I had hoped we were not going to have to go through it many more times-will remember that the chief opponent alongside my own party at the time, which I regret, was the New Democratic Party. It claimed at the time the job losses that would occur as a consequence of this managed trade pact were going to destroy the auto industry in Canada, and we could not afford to have that.
What is now said by the members of the New Democratic Party is that they are for that kind of pact. In fact, they tried to argue in the free trade debate that it was the auto pact, which they now claim to support, which would be hurt most by the free trade agreement. That is on the record.
I suggest, therefore, that the record before us, because the New Democratic Party knows it would be impossible to have any face in this country by arguing, in a country where 50 per cent of the private sector income is based upon trade, and that therefore the jobs and well-being of a very large number of Canadians, directly or indirectly, more than one-third or 40 per cent of Canadians, are dependent on trading relationships. In fact, it is our trading relationships that make us the most money of all activities in this country and therefore produce the taxes to pay for things.
It would be impossible to stand before a Canadian audience and say the whole truth about the New Democratic Party's position on trade, which is that it is isolationist and has absolutely no interest in liberalizing trade. Therefore, it says it is against specific arrangements such as the current free trade agreement or the proposal with regard to Mexico. I have yet to hear the New Democratic Party say it is for any form of current proposed trading relationship except the GATT. It now says it is for the GATT.
I assume it knows what people are talking about. Wanting to get out of free trade arrangements probably will not come via the GATT, which is why it is for it. It is in effect saying that if we were to get success at the GATT, which is fondly to be hoped because it would solve this problem of having all these bilateral relationships, we would be getting through the GATT with Mexico and the United States precisely what it is the government is talking about negotiating with Mexico and
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the United States. And it is that which the New Democratic Party says it is opposed to in this resolution.
Some day, somewhere, and maybe here is a good time, those who claim to make this case on behalf of the New Democratic Party, ought at least once explain why if you get it through Geneva it is okay, but if you get it through Ottawa it is not. It is illogical to maintain these two positions externally.
I assume the New Democratic Party is saying that, in effect, because it knows the GATT is not going to deliver in time, given the regional blocks that are being developed by people who are tired of waiting for the GATT to deliver, it feels safe in saying it can support the GATT process. It will argue that all these developments externally in the world, whether it is in the Pacific Rim or the new Europe, ought to be opposed. After all, trade liberalization is faster than the GATT proposal, and after all, we have to be for only the GATT because that is slow.
Those people who have to deal in real policy in the real world know better. That is precisely why people who look forward and who understand the importance of trade to this country have devoted so much of their time in the last few years trying to make sure we have more and more access to a larger and larger market. The corollary of that is we must be prepared to open our market to the competitively produced goods of the people with whom we wish to trade.
I was taught in college-unfortunately too long ago- that that is a fundamental principle of the development of the economy of the world and of good political relationships in the world. What a man like Richard Nixon once wrote-bless his heart, in a different context-in the New York Times was a policy of trade through detente and detente through trade; that ultimately when we built the multilateral trading relationships that this kind of a motion is about and would oppose, we are doing more than simply trading goods. We are indeed finding ways to talk through trade, to try to say to people who have environmental problems, please do something about it and people who have labour problems and standards problems, please we want to help you fix it.
Let me say it to the hon. member this way. If he will not accept the advantages or he does not accept the virtues of a free trade relationship with Mexico, who
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does he accept it with? In other words, the New Democratic Party said we could not have a relationship with the United States because it is bigger, tougher, better and stronger. Well, we cannot have it with Mexico because it is poorer and weaker. Who can we have it with in the mind of the New Democratic Party? It has yet to say one country that it would negotiate any form of trading relationship with.
Is it India? Is it the countries of the Third World which ultimately need the support of the north, says the New Democratic Party and say some members of my party? The best way we can help those countries expand and develop their economies, have the resources with which to upgrade the standards, and get rid of things like child labour in India, is to be able to sell more goods to the industrialized world. Or is it the case that members of the New Democratic Party are so isolationist, so protectionist, so hidebound in the thinking of the fifties, and so devoted to their relationship with big labour, that what they want to say is: "We will help Indian and Mexico and the countries of the Third World by sending them grants, aid and NGO support, but we will continue not to have free trading relationships with them until they get up to our moral standard".
If that is what the NDP is saying, then I say shame on it, because that is an extraordinary thing to be saying to the people it claims, externally from this country, to want to help. Surely it ought to know that the best way we can produce assistance to those that we want to help and to our own selves is to recognize that what built the quality of this nation was its capacity to pay for its goods, its services and its government programs on the basis that we have always been an extroverted, outward looking trading nation. That is where we got the wealth to pay for this place and the places like this and everything that comes from it. That is what those countries want to do.
I say to the hon. member, even if he were right that the GATT was the process that was going to work, why is it that it is wrong to do bilaterally what you are trying to do multilaterally? Is it not better and is it not smarter to recognize that we are encouraging the process of international liberalization by trade liberalization. That message somehow seems to have been lost.
Instead we get quite strange suggestions. Mexico's labour policies are not good enough. It has environmental problems. All true. The dispute settlement mechanism, according to the previous member, is not

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producing any good results. My gosh, say that to the people who just won the pork dispute.


Steve Butland: They didn't win it yet.


John William Bosley: Oh, yes they did, in their minds. The hon. member's issue is dead simple.


Steve Butland: There is still one leg left.


John William Bosley: The hon. member would simply have us sit back here, sit behind protectionist walls and in that way we would not have any trade disputes, would we, because we would not be trading with anybody.
He then quotes somebody concerned about moving a plant to Mexico in June 1989 and blames that on the Canada-Mexico free trade negotiations, which have not begun. It is a little tricky to make the leap of logic. There is nothing that the member will not do. He talks about the change in the social costs that Mr. Cardenas talked about. Absolutely right. If you read Mr. Cardenas carefully, what he says is we need economic integration with the rest of North America in order to find some way to do it. The hon. member is now saying: "But not this one".
I say to the hon. member, if he seriously believes that he wants environmental agreements parallel to this trading agreement and he wants labour mobility agreements parallel to this trading agreement and he wants workers' standards agreements parallel to this agreement, he wants the European model, say some members of this party, then ask for it.
If the NDP will stand up and say it is for a common market, then I will say to them, good, I agree with you. I am saying it. I want it. But the NDP whenever asked have said: "We don't want that either". So what does the NDP want? It wants only to say no.
Well, that is not good enough. There is ultimately a way that we can help ourselves and help others, and that is by recognizing that the long-term solution is in economics. The hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca loves to talk about something called sovereign economies. There is no such thing. Capital, money, those things move beyond and around borders. You cannot protect yourself into economic development. It is not possible to do it. All that happens is that your competitors liberalize because they realize it is to their advantage
and they pass you by. We are now happily a member of the G-7 because of our current status and our current standing in economic terms.
It is not going to be very long from now where, because we are-for reasons they may not recognize, and it is not the free trade agreement but other factors such as the policies that have been adopted, particularly by provincial governments, in the last little while. I tremble to think what is going to happen in my province when the new budget comes down from the hon. member's party. The deficit is projected to be $10 billion in Ontario and I tremble to think what is going to happen, because of the policies that are driving businesses out of Ontario. It is not the free trade agreement as the hon. member will find if he asks anyone who is leaving.
Those policies of simply spending faster than we have income to tax, putting all the load on business at a time when business is trying to get out of the slump, all of that is not going to do anything but cause damage.
Hon. members like to quote figures about the free trade agreement or somehow claim that we made claims that there would be a massive economic development as a result of the free trade agreement. I remember the debate and specifically the information we handed out in the election. It said, if you go back and look at it, there would be 125,000 new jobs over 10 years. I remember that statement. That is what it said. I remember making the speeches. In fact the hon. member will remember, but he is now going around handing out quotes-as all members do-from what the CLC says on job losses as a result of the free trade agreement, or says: "What happened to the Informetrica study", or "What happened to the de Grandpre report".
What the de Grandpre report said and what Informetrica said is that it is awfully difficult, and I accept it both ways, to tell whether a job has been lost or gained because of the free trade agreement or some other effect.
People-sensible folks-say they cannot tell whether the plant in their part of the world has just expanded because it has an advantage due to free trade, or the plant in the riding of the hon. member for Burlington has just expanded because of free trade. Whether that is a fact, it may be what they think is the case. It may not be the whole case.
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Then, go to the economists and ask how these things are measured. They will say that normally they must be measured in quantum. So you will find something like this. Here is the report of the Canada West Foundation.
If we had produced this the hon. members opposite would have said they do not trust it because the government has produced it or the Conservatives produced it, but somebody else produced it. What does it say? I quote: "Contrary to prevailing perception under FTA Canada has significantly expanded its exports of end products by a net increase of over $4 billion while imports or exports from the U.S. have declined by $600 million".
What does that mean? It means in economic terms that we are better off than we would have been had we not had the free trade agreement. No one in his right mind is going to deny that we have lost jobs in the last year or that there has not been a recession. It is there. It is a fact.
What the economists are saying when they do the analysis is if we had not had the free trade agreement, and this will come as a great shock to the hon. member, we would have had an even greater loss of jobs. That is exactly what the economists are saying. They are saying that measuring the impact of the free trade agreement separate from its context, to say just what the free trade agreement has done, and that can only be measured in terms of relative exports and imports, what has happened is that we have improved our case in North America on the export-import side.
Is that a piece of evidence that should matter to the hon. member? It should if we go back to the premise that we started with, that because we are a trading nation, because we are so dependent upon trade, the long-term financial well-being of this country is dependent upon not only increasing trade but increasing trade in end product.
We cannot, and I am sure the hon. member would agree, go on forever basing our wealth and our standard of living on exporting resources. That is not something we want to do. Nor can we have any confidence in our future if we want to rely on low tech manufacturing.
Whether the hon. member likes it or not, what was going on before any of these agreements were signed was that people were taking some of the companies out of
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this country to places where the same product could be made in world terms or in global market terms, competitively. Not having an agreement is not going to change that. That is going to exist. It is, therefore, a government's responsibility, a policy-maker's responsibility, to say: "How can we try to get access to the new markets that are going to be created, with new wealth and new incomes, where those jobs are going to be and those products are going to be made?"
In other words, are we better off recognizing that having a free trading relationship with more countries- and I am fully happy to say to the member, not just Mexico, but hopefully the Central American countries and the whole hemisphere, if we are successful-to have tariff-free trading relationships, barrier-free trading relationships, with those countries, recognizing that that they do have low wages with which to try and do things for the moment.
We are better off, if we build the relationships that allow us to sell what we know to them, which is going to be higher technologies, communications, value added commercial technologies, that they can use, on top of what they have got. In other words, it is this simple.
The hon. member says he wants to focus his energies on making the Canadian pie closed. He wants no one to be able to sell against his constituents, in competition with people who work in his riding, until he is satisfied that their labour practises or their environmental practises are good enough. The consequence of that is, when that gets around, people will start to say you cannot sell to us if we cannot sell to you. That is what free trading relationships mean.
Canada is one of the countries that until recently, vis-a-vis its main competitor, the United States, had higher tariffs, not lower ones. What will happen when that is perceived is that we will lose market share, we will lose the capacity to sell. Or, the other way to say it to him is, as there are more auto parts manufacturers and plants and Maquiladora expands its process in Mexico and goes further, it will be tougher for Canadians to make products here and sell them into the U.S. because there will be Mexican competition for that export market, not for the domestic market here. That is not the threat. We want to get access to the success that is going to happen in Mexico in order to be able to sell a product, in order to be able to do business in a growing pie.

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That is the reason for free trading relationships. There is no other way get access to the new economies and the new wealth that is coming.
Yes, there are adjustments that have to be made to face that. As we get out of the recession, hopefully there will be more money for more training and more re-training, and we can persuade business to do more of that. All of those things are true.
It is simply illogical, and certainly fundamentally unsound economics, to think that a country that depends for a third of its standard of living on trade can have any other policy than trade expansionism and trade liberalization.
I say to people on the other side whom I know with the best intentions in the world are focused on those who maybe negatively effected, dislocated, fired, or lose their jobs, that is important, but it is not the big picture.
The big picture, if those people are going to lose their jobs because they are uncompetitive, if I am going to lose my job because I am uncompetitive in political terms- and maybe that is what is going to happen-then that is going to happen. You are not going to stop that job loss by not having a free trading agreement.


Eugène Bellemare: What about unfair competition?


John William Bosley: Someone shouted out "what about unfair competition?" What you do with a free trading agreement or with GATT solutions, if we can get them into this kind of an agreement, is build into it, as we have, the right to use the disputes settlement mechanism to deal with questions of unfair trading practises, and make sure that you have the right to challenge laws that are passed in your competitor's country to protect unfair trading practises.


Eugène Bellemare: Who are the arbiters?


John William Bosley: The arbiters are the bi-national panels that are composed between the countries. Members want to say it cannot be done. It is being done. The free trade agreement, contrary to what members opposite think, is producing net jobs in this country and is producing dispute settlements that are so much faster and so much better that our business community has never seen anything like it. That is exactly what they will tell you.
Finally, that is the wave of the future. You can ride it or you can close your eyes to it, which is what I suggest all members opposite are doing.


Lyle Vanclief: Madam Speaker, I would just like to make a couple of comments to the member across the floor.
I had a discussion as recently as this morning with a major food processor in the province of Ontario who stated that the food processing industry in Ontario is haemorrhaging. It is past bleeding, it is haemorrhaging. The product that is being offered here-yes it is being offered here-is being delivered here at a lower cost. I know my colleague's answer back will be "we must be competitive".
My question is, what do you say to these producers of food products out there? What are they going to do? What protection are we, as a Parliament in Ottawa, going to give them? What answers are we going to give to them? What do we give to them as a suggestion or offer of what they do to make a livelihood down the road? What are we going to say to them? The government offered training programs after the last free trade agreement which it has not delivered. Where are they? What are we going to say to these people?
The member's comments a minute ago were: "Oh, yes, you have lost your job because you are non-competitive." Are you just going to say to these people: "I'm sorry"? Are you suggesting that they move south of the border or move to Mexico and work there? What are we going to do with them?


John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, there is now something over $3 billion in the pot for training programs. That is why we did it.
What the hon. member likes to forget is that when we attempted to move some funds from the unemployment insurance fund into the training side of the ledger so that it could be used for other things-ah, the hon. members do not go back on that, in other words, when they opposed more money for training. They now like to say "where is the money for training".
The hon. member is fully capable of reading the de Grandpre report which we commissioned, at great expense, to say if we need any specific new programs to deal with the free trade adjustment process. The hon. member knows full well what it said. It said you cannot make the distinction, therefore you cannot, in fairness, say that a person who loses his job for technological change or a person who loses his job because of the free trade agreement has a right to be treated any differently
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in fact or in law. If we did it, the hon. member would be the first to say: "You have no right to make such a discriminatory practice in the spending of money to assist someone who has lost his or her job".
What the government promised was for the de Grandpre commission to tell us if we needed new adjustment programs on top of the existing system. The de Grandpre commission said: "You do not. You have got the guts of a good system for everybody who loses their jobs and you need to work with that." So, that is what we did.
In other words, the hon. member is right, people who are in industries where retraining is needed have every right to come to the provincial and federal governments and say: "What can you do to help us". We have obligations to help and we believe we are meeting them.


Steve Butland: Madam Speaker, I have so many reactions to the hon. member's speech I am not sure where to start, so they will be random comments.
Anybody who would quote Richard Nixon and Diane Francis in the same paragraph is really reaching for people to endorse what they believe in, because that is apparently the opposite end of the spectrums or the opposite end of walks of life. But, whatever, when you are desperate you will quote just about anybody.
The member talked about us being illogical. I have been on a few committees with this gentleman as the chairman. I think he is a very reasonable man, but the problem is that the government has these ideological blinders on and it cannot react in any other way.
The only thing that I can absolutely and positively refute is his indication that the dispute panels are very successful. They fast track the decisions.
He cited the pork ruling. Of course, we have not finished with the pork ruling yet. The Americans had one last kick at it. They said: "There is some sort of extraordinary appeal that we can make." They have not given up. When they lose, we lose.
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The panel dispute mechanism is not working, and I am sure the member knows that.


John William Bosley: It is working.


Steve Butland: It is not working.
As far as the New Democrats being protectionists and isolationists, we suggest that we go out there and negotiate deals from our strength. We should be the initiators, and not tie ourselves to the Americans. We are tied in with them, and we are losing.
They are going to grab our hand and say: "Let's go over here. We know what is good for you." Ask the people again. They know what is good for them. They say: "No. We will not accept what you did negotiate, and we are not prepared to accept what you are going to negotiate for us because we have lost control of our destiny." I know you do not want to hear it, Madam Speaker, but we are losing control of our sovereignty.
Canadians believe that because they see it happening each and every day. The member says: "We did not say this. We said this." I guess there was a varied story during the campaign because I know in my riding the member indicated to me that there were going to be thousands of jobs created in my riding, let alone across Canada.
The bottom line is we are suffering. We are in a recession. If it is not totally related to free trade, certainly the high Canadian dollar and interest rates going along with free trade are part and parcel of the Canadian problem.


John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, yes, there is a great gulf between the member and myself.
He cannot find a single economist and analyst of what has happened in the last 18 months who does not say that the free trade agreement has restrained the negative effect of the recession on this country. Every independent analysis says that.


An hon. member:: Oh, oh.


John William Bosley: The hon. member laughs. The same folks who say that health care is not being funded because of free trade say that every single job loss is because of free trade.
I say to them that it is factually untrue. Everybody who is in the world of analysis of this stuff knows it. The

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reason some Canadians are afraid of the free trade agreement is that members opposite keep telling them what is, in my view, factually untrue. They are saying that it is the free trade agreement that is causing the job losses.
It is not the free trade agreement that is causing the job losses. If there is a recession going on in the country because your spending policy is particularly provincial or too high and if you have governments spending beyond their means in this country and you drive interest rates up to the point where they are higher than they should be-
I want to deal first with the comments that were made on the motion of the hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca that we are debating today. After all, he is the one who started the debate and moved the motion that condemns the Canadian government's involvement in these discussions. I can understand why.
The hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, in a vigorous speech this morning, went on at considerable length.


Steve Butland: Check your 1988 election promises.


John William Bosley: Here they go. Here they go, again. Madam Speaker, you can't tell a socialist anything anymore in this House.


Steve Butland: Sure you can.


John William Bosley: No, I can't. There is no point. When a wall is made of concrete, that is what it is made of.


Steve Butland: An excellent speech.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I would not say that it was excellent but he certainly got going, talking about how the Liberal Party had lost the voice when the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra left as leader of this party. After all, the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra led the fight against the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in the 1988 election campaign, and extremely well he did too.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Resuming debate.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, I am delighted to be able to participate in a debate on Mexico-U.S.-Canada free trade.
This is clearly an issue that, like the free trade debate we were through two years ago with respect to the U.S. agreement, will be of considerable importance over the next period of time as we watch the government embark on these veiy important negotiations.
I am also happy to be part of a party that has come up with a very sensible forward-looking policy on free trade that acknowledges the existence of a situation that we fought valiantly against throughout the election.


Steve Butland: Valiantly?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie is getting overwrought. He thinks our policy changes week by week, but in fact as he will discover in the documents I am about to quote our policy has been consistent in this matter for many months now, certainly for more than a month. The quotation I am about to get is very up-to-date and very sensible. I will come to that in a minute, if he can control himself.
The amazing thing was that the hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca tried to pretend that the Liberal Party had lost its direction since the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra left the leadership. I want to assure the hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca that is simply not so. Of all the people to complain about it, he should be among the last. With great respect, anyone from the New Democratic Party should be the last to complain about a lack of direction in the Liberal Party with respect to free trade, because it was the members of the New Democratic Party, particularly their former leader, honest Ed Broadbent, who attacked the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra throughout the campaign. He questioned his credibility, accused him of being dishonest with the people of Canada, accused him of not being true to his view that the free trade agreement was bad for Canada.
I can remember Mr. Broadbent accusing the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra of changing his mind when he took office. He said: "When the Liberals take office they will pretend they never made a promise to tear up the free trade deal. He does not really mean it". That is what the leader of the New Democratic Party said, and the leader of the New Democratic Party joined ranks with his friend the Prime Minister of Canada and attacked the integrity of the hon. member for Vancouver
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Quadra in a way that can only be described as despicable. It was a shocking disgrace.
If there is any evidence lacking of that little pact between the Prime Minister and Mr. Broadbent, we can only look at Mr. Broadbent's nose in the trough today, at the job he has been given by the Prime Minister, his $120,000 a year salary and the concomitant pension. He is doing very well, thank you.
I think it is one of the most disgraceful political episodes we have had in this country, when the Prime Minister and the former leader of the New Democratic Party joined ranks and attacked the member for Vancouver Quadra and said that what he said was not true. They attacked his credibility throughout the election campaign and undermined it. In the result they were successful in keeping their own fortunes high enough to ensure a defeat of the Liberal Party at the polls and the victory of a government that was pledged to bring the free trade agreement into effect, and that is exactly what they did.
Hon. members on my left sat here in the House with me in December 1988, voting against this agreement, knowing that their leader had helped to undermine the credibility of the principal champion of the fight against free trade, namely the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, and assuring a Conservative victory that brought us this dreadful agreement that has cost Canadians so many jobs, as we heard this morning.
For the hon. member from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca to stand here and rant and rave as he did about Liberal hypocrisy was just a bit much. It is a shame he is not here to defend himself on these outrageous comments, because really it was an absolutely shocking performance.


An hon. member:: It is a shame that the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra is not here.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: It is too bad the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra is not here, or he would have things to say on this particular debate as well.


An hon. member:: I will bet he could.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: I want to turn to the Minister for International Trade who got up and huffed and puffed about the comments made by the hon. member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. To describe his speech as a lot of huff and puff is perhaps kind and probably the only
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thing one could say about it. As the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie pointed out, it was long on humour but short on facts.
In listening to the minister, one has to wonder exactly what it is he is proposing to do in these talks with Mexico and the United States concerning free trade. That is the concern we in this party have about the whole approach the government is taking to this agreement.
What is its approach? We have never been told. We certainly got no enlightenment this morning from the Minister for International Trade who participated in the debate. One would have thought that instead of reading from Maclean's magazine, Royal Bank projections and economic reports, he might have got down to some facts and told us what the government's position is in these negotiations. We did not get any of that at all.
The minister quoted Diane Francis as though she was some expert who knew everything about the effects of the old free trade agreement. He told us nothing about Canada's proposals in this new round of negotiations in which we are about to take part.
I must say that Diane Francis may be an expert. I do not know her qualifications in this field, but when I read her articles I have doubts that she knows what she is talking about on the subject of free trade. She seems to think that none of the job losses that have occurred in Canada over the last two years are the result of free trade. Yet the Prime Minister himself throughout the election campaign in 1988 assured us that once this deal was approved there were going to be hundreds of thousands of jobs created for Canadians; it was going to become a period of uninterrupted prosperity and increasing wealth for Canadians.
We all know that we are now in the worst recession we have had in the last decade, since the early 1980s. We know unemployment has gone to its highest level since the government took office in 1984. We know that interest rates have gone way back up and recently down because of the government's ham-fisted policies of mucking up the Canadian economy. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, not created. We have unemployment of 1.4 million people in Canada today.
All this, we are told, is not the fault of the free trade agreement. This is just a recession or something that is

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apparently caused by external forces, according to the government. Of course we know differently. We know that the government's policies have caused this recession: the high interest rate policy, the tight money policy, the overspending policy of the government in its management of the fiscal affairs of the country. I could go on and on.
The government itself has to accept responsibility for the economic mess we are in, yet it does not want to blame it on the free trade agreement. It has at least managed to avoid that because it would be so contradictory to what it was saying throughout the campaign in 1988.
I cannot help but believe that many of the jobs are lost as a result of the free trade deal. I can point to examples in my own riding of factories that have closed down and moved to the United States.
Hon. members can say it was not because of the free trade deal. That is what we always hear from the minister and people like the hon. member for Don Valley West. They say that there is no evidence that ties it to the free trade deal. I have evidence. When the president of the company says that with free trade there is no advantage to staying in Canada and that he is closing down and moving south, and moves, and all the people are laid off, what more evidence do we need?
Hon. members opposite persist in denying that there is any evidence that free trade has hurt Canada. I say that there is evidence that it has hurt Canada. There is very little evidence that it has helped Canada. Their own policies may be solely responsible for the recession, but they are not admitting that. So what else is responsible? I suggest the free trade agreement has not brought the promised bonanza to Canada but in fact has helped make this recession worse.
It was obvious to everyone when the deal was negotiated that there would be certain businesses and industries that would close down in Canada as a result of free trade. Those are closing lock, stock and barrel, and we are losing jobs in Canada as a direct result of this agreement.
Unfortunately the minister will not stand up and admit that fact in the House. He will not give us figures, and his department does not even prepare them. They do not even look at the facts and attempt to give Canadians a
fair, balanced and honest picture of what this deal has done for this country.
Surely before we embark on another round of negotiations with someone else, we should have some figures on this, some authoritative figures, not Diane Francis' quotations in Maclean's magazine. Let us get some facts on it. I would ask the minister to produce some hard figures from myriad experts he has working in his department who now probably are being pulled off this kind of work to deal with the situation, with the Mexico talks.
I would like to quote an authority on this. I refer to a member of this House, a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, the member for Etobicoke North, who is well-known for his extensive views and writing on free trade. I have some words from him now. He expresses the fear-


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: He is well-known for supporting the GST.


Mr. Sobeski:: He supported the GST.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member wants me to speak about the birds and the bees. I am sticking to the Mexico-Canada free trade agreement.


An hon. member:: We want something different.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member is a well-known authority. He has expressed his concern about the government's ability to negotiate for this country, a concern that many of us have felt for years. We have the record of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which was so badly bungled by the government. Then we have the record of Meech Lake, which was botched and botched again by this government. It is understandable that Canadians are nervous when they hear that this government is going to go out and negotiate another deal.


Fred J. Mifflin: To say the least.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: "To say the least", as my hon. colleague from Bonavista-Trinity-Conception says.
The hon. member for Etobicoke North, who is the trade critic for this party, expressed his grave concern as follows:
-the same government that so mishandled United States-Canada free trade is now embarking on the negotiation of free trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico. Canadians have no
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confidence in the Mulroney Government's ability to protect Canadian interests given its failure to promote Canada's interests during the United States-Canada free trade negotiations.
Truer words were never spoken.
I go on to quote the hon. member:
The lesson that Canadians learned from those negotiations is that the Government's promises of adjustment assistance are empty promises. Nor has this Government instituted the necessary educational and retraining programs to assist Canadians to be more competitive. Worse still, its high interest rate, high dollar monetary policy has crippled Canadian business in the face of increased competition from the United States.
Those are words that I suggest are far more relevant to the debate today than the quotations from Diane Francis in Maclean's magazine the minister cited in support of his arguments. I urge the minister to read the hon. member for Etobicoke North's statements on this subject. I could go on quoting him at great length, but he is not the only one who is concerned about the government's ability to negotiate.
Let me read from one of the supporters of free trade who has given us the benefit of his views. It is reported in today's edition of Le Devoir.

The article is in French and reports what the vicepresident of Samson, Belair, Deloitte and Touche International had to say. The vice-president of the firm, Mr. Pierre S. Pettigrew, indicated his concern about the ability of this government to negotiate an agreement with Mexico. This is what the author of the article, Michel Van de Walle of Canadian Press, reported, and I quote:
A supporter of free trade, Mr. Pettigrew was very critical of the way the Mulroney government conducted negotiations with the United States. He said that negotiations were very unsatisfactory in the furniture sector, for instance. Canada had agreed to reduce its tariffs at the same rate as the Americans. That was crazy. Our tariffs were twice as high as the U.S. tariffs. This meant that we had to reduce a tariff of 16 per cent over five years, while the U.S. tariff was 5 per cent to start with. It shows a total lack of respect for our industry.

Canadians from every walk of life, supporters or not of the free trade agreement, are concerned about this government's ability to negotiate a fair and reasonable agreement that protects Canada's interests. Yet the government has indicated that it is marching off to negotiate this deal.
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We in the Liberal Party are very concerned that we are not getting from the government a clear statement of its intentions. We call on the government today, under the guise of this motion moved by the member of the New Democratic Party, to come clean and tell Canadians what goals we can expect from these talks. What are the national objectives we should have in going into these discussions? What benefits does the government see as coming from these talks for Canadians? Are Canadians supportive of the government initiative in participation in the talks?
Surely we cannot decide whether it is a good thing or a bad thing for Canada unless we have some statement from the government of what we expect to get. There has been no statement forthcoming. We are simply told free trade is good, that the freer trade is the better off we are all going to be.
Canadians do not swallow that line. They should not have to swallow it. They should be given some facts and figures to back this up. We should be told, for example, what things we are likely to be able to purchase from Mexico at a lower rate after the agreement than what we can purchase today.
We should be told by our government what kinds of things we can reasonably expect to export to Mexico if its tariff barriers come down. Yet not a scintilla of evidence has been put before this House to give us some indication of what benefits or otherwise might result from a free trade agreement with that country.


Fred J. Mifflin: It is because they don't know.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: It may be because they don't know. If they don't know, surely they should find out before they start participating.


Fred J. Mifflin: It didn't stop them before.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception says it did not stop them before. He is quite right. They got into the talks with the United States as a means of finding some way out of the fact that they had done nothing in this country for four years in government and needed something to go the electorate with in 1988.


Mr. Dorin:: What was the result?


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: The hon. member for Edmonton Northwest asks: "What was the result?" As I said at the outset of my remarks, had he been paying close attention, the result would have been different had the efforts of the member for Vancouver Quadra not been so effectively

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undermined by the then leader of the New Democratic Party.
The second objective the Liberal Party promotes is that we should be seeking multilateral trading relations with other countries to get us out of the very unsatisfactory bilateral trade relations that we have with the United States at this time.
Third, we believe that we should negotiate an agreement that could be extended to include other countries in the western hemisphere and possibly in Europe and on the Pacific Rim.
As a party we have always supported the concept of free trade. What we have not supported is the particular deal that this government produced which-and I do not want to go into all that again-included much more than free trade. It covered far more than trade. It included a sale of Canada's resources and the restructuring of Canada's economy to one of dependence.
Fourth, we would ask the government to outline adjustment programs for Canadian labour and for Canadian industry that will be put in place before the agreement comes into force. We were promised, during the 1988 election campaign, adjustment programs for Canadian workers and for Canadian industry after the free trade agreement became law. There have been no adjustment programs. In fact, as we have said for months in the House, there have been cuts in what programs there were in place before that might have served as adjustment programs.
There have been no new ones created. In fact the government has completely failed in delivering on that promise. It has broken its to Canadians and it has done worse than that, it has cut back on the programs that were in existence.
Fifth and finally, we would ask for some guarantee from the government that Canada's social, cultural and regional development programs will remain in place following this deal. No such undertaking was given in respect of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. We have watched this government slash and cut away at those things in Canada.
We do not have the protection in place as a result of that agreement for Canadian cultural industries that we feel are important. We hope that in considering the negotiations today we will have those programs put in
place so that when the new agreement, if any, is worked out with Mexico and the United States we will have protection for Canada's cultural industries.
Those are the points that we as a party are putting forward. We believe they are positive. We believe Canada should be involved in these talks. We support that part of the initiative. However we ask that these safeguards be put in place so that Canadians are not pillaged by their government the way they were in 1988.


Clément Couture: Madam Speaker, at the beginning of his speech, the hon. member said that he could not judge the expertise of Diane Francis, but I simply would like to read a short paragraph from the article. Ms. Francis said: "The facts show that Canada has prospered under free trade. For the month in which free trade came into force, January 1989, Statistics Canada reported 12,436,000 jobs in this country. In November, November 1990, the most recent date for which figures are available, there were 12,497,000 jobs, a net gain of 63,000 jobs in this country".
In another paragraph she mentioned: "Free trade has been and still is a good economic policy". Perhaps, but her reasoning is as follows: "Because it ensures access to the best markets in the world and forces Canada to become more efficient".
Madam Speaker, although the hon. member says he doesn't know Ms. Francis, I would like to hear his response to this: Between December 1989, when free trade came into force, until November 1, 1990, a net surplus of 63,000 jobs was created in this country. Although I hope he will not confuse a recession with a free trade agreement that gives us access to the best markets in the world, I would like to hear the hon. member's response, to be able to judge his comments on what Ms. Francis said.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Madam Speaker, it isn't easy to answer the hon. member's question as stated, because he quoted figures indicating the number of Canadians on the labour market for two months only: January 1989 and November 1990. The problem is this: During that period, people immigrated to Canada. We admitted more than 250,000 people from other countries during that period. The hon. member referred to an increase of 60,000 in the number of people
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with jobs. Sixty thousand is not much, considering that 250,000 new arrivals came to this country. It is not the same thing. According to the Prime Minister, free trade was supposed to create several thousand jobs, 125,000 jobs in this country. Where are those jobs? And what does 63,000 represent? It is not enough, and I am sure the hon. member will agree.
I have another quote, Madam Speaker, by my colleague, the hon. member for Etobicoke North, which might be of interest to the hon. member for Saint-Jean. He said, and I quote:
The Mulroney government allows the priorities of Mexico and the United States to take precedence. That is not the position Canada should have taken. We should have aimed at a global and multilateral expansion of our economy in the western hemisphere, instead of a slow trickle.
That is a very important point. I hope the hon. member for Saint-Jean will be able to inform the Tory caucus of the excellent ideas put forward by the hon. member for Etobicoke North.


Dawn Black: I listened to the member for Kingston and the Islands very carefully, and a lot of what he said today kind of re-fought the last election campaign. He indicated that the party he represents in this House was the major opposition to the trade deal with the United States.
It seems to me that what we are hearing today from the Liberal members in this House is that they are speaking on both sides of this issue. It is getting increasingly difficult to make any sense out of what they are saying.
I want to ask the member if he would give us a straightforward answer on just exactly where his party stands today on the trade deal with the United States, on an expanded trade deal including Mexico and the conditions in Mexico, which he seems to be somewhat aware of.
He talked about the previous leader of his party and that it was the fight of his life for the member from Vancouver Quadra. I want the member to understand that the fight is still going on. Many of us are still fighting the fight of someone else's life, and I wonder where the member from Vancouver Quadra is on this issue and why is he not continuing the fight of his life.
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Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Why the hon. member for New Westminster-Burnaby would ask me what the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra is saying or what he thinks on this issue is beyond me. I have not asked him. I would have thought that as a near neighbour she might pop into Vancouver one of these days and ask him herself.
I can tell the hon. member though, that if she has any trouble believing my facts with respect to the election campaign-and she seems to be a little incredulous-I urge her to read Rick Salutin's book. I have been reading it now for some weeks. He is not a particular supporter of this party. I read it at bedtime and I find it a very fine thing to help me get to sleep.
The hon. member for New Westminster-Burnaby might profit from reading this book. It certainly describes the woefully inadequate attitude of her party and its leadership in the fight against free trade during the 1988 election campaign, and their attempts to discredit the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, whose view she is so interested in today.
I urge her to write to the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra if she wishes to have the benefit of his opinions, and get them.
Now let me turn to the second part of her question because she seemed not to understand the Liberal position. I thought she was listening to my speech and I am sure she listened to the speech of the hon. member for Haldimand-Norfolk, who made an excellent presentation and presented the views of this party with clarity and precision.
I tried to be equally clear. I said during my speech that we support the government's initiative in participating in these talks because we recognize that Canada cannot afford to let this government-or, frankly, I would prefer this government were not doing the talks because we realize the risks there are in having it do it-but, unfortunately, it is the Government of Canada so somebody has to be at that negotiating table. We should not leave this to the United States and to Mexico to do on their own; we need to be involved in the talks.
I have just given a five-point outline of things we believe this government should do before it gets involved. That is, come forward with the pros and the cons; tell Canadians the advantages and disadvantages of free trade with Mexico; tell us about its objectives in going into these discussions; guarantee the protection of Canada's social programs; outline comprehensive adjustment programs for Canadian labour and industry before we

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get the agreement into force, and tell us what those are going to be in advance; and, finally, negotiate an agreement that will allow more countries than the three of us to be involved in a free trade economic zone.
Those are the objectives I believe the government should pursue in this matter. That is the position of this party. I think it is perfectly clear. I hope the hon. member does not need me to put it in writing. If so, I will underline the relevant portions of my speech in Hansard on Monday and send it to her.


Mr. Bill Kempling (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, on February 5 the Prime Minister, along with Presidents Bush and Salinas, made an historic announcement, that our three countries would negotiate a North American free trade agreement.
This announcement set in train a process that will help to build and enrich our three countries.
It is not a perfect agreement, but an excellent agreement and one that is working to the mutual benefit of both Canada and the United States. As its benefits become clear to Canadians, it will be seen by all sides to be a far-sighted agreement.
February 5 is a particularly important day to me. It is my birthday, so having an analysis on that day means something special to me, especially at my advanced age.
I want to try to take a little different tack on this debate because it is back and forth-you said this and I said that, who said something in the election? I want to put another slant on it, if I can.
The Gross National Product of United States of America is $5 trillion. That is double the Gross National Product of Japan and 25 per cent of the Gross National Product of the developed world.
What we have done with the free trade agreement is open a $5 trillion market to Canadian business. Over a period of 10 years, it will become tariff free.
It is all very well for academics and others who have never had a callus on their hands to stand in this place and debate matters of trade, international affairs and so forth, but I do not know if any of them have really
operated a business or been responsible for the development or expansion of a business, or had to go out of the country to find customers because of our small population.
We have some excellent industries in Canada, and some of them have developed some substantial markets overseas. I notice that Mexico is our second largest customer for steel. We ship steel bar into Mexico. Mexico makes it into springs and ship it back into Brampton where we make automobiles. We sell the bulk of the tin plate that is used in the canning industry in Mexico, so we have a stake in that market already.
Aside from that, the argument here today seems to revolve around numbers. Who are the winners? Who are the losers? The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands looks upon the free trade agreement as some sort of balance. We did not gain any jobs, all we have done is lose jobs. He speaks of the jobs that have gone out of his constituency.
It is important to realize that this agreement is two years old. There are adjustments going on, and I will give you a perfect example.
A gentleman who happened to be the president of Toledo Scales called my office one morning and he said: "I have good news and bad news." I said: "Give me the bad news first, and I can end up with the good news." He said: "I have a plant in Windsor that we opened in 1890. We make scales, and I am going to close that plant down."
I said: "What is the good news?" He said: "I have more bad news," and I said: "What is that?" He said: "I have a head office in Mississauga, and I am going to close that down." I asked him whether there could be any good news after that. He said: "Oh yes, we are going to open a state of the art plant in Burlington,"-my constituency-"where we will combine our manufacturing and our head office in one operation. We will be world competitive. We will even be able to compete with the Japanese."
That is the type of adjustment that is going on in this country, and people do not realize it. When you sign a free trade agreement, you cannot turn things around that fast. People have to make decisions. Humans are involved.
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In the case of Toledo Scales, it looked at the age of the people involved in the industry and said: "The bulk of them went on retirement." They had been there for years. It was one of those kinds of companies.
The person running an industry look at himself and asks: "What am I going to do? Am I going to stay in the domestic market? Am I going to stay in the Canadian market? Am I going to find a niche in the American market? Am I going to go North American? Am I going to go global?" Those are the decisions that a businessman has to make.
Depending on what decision he makes, he says: "I need more capital. I need more plant space. I need some more productive machinery," or, "I am going to sell this business because I am at an age when I do not want to go into the expansionist phase."
Those are decisions he has to make. The only connection to free trade is that the government has opened up this tremendous $5 trillion market and the man has an option he never had before. He has to decide just where he is going to go and how he is going to do it.
In Windsor, Dofasco, NKK of Japan, National Steel of the United States have put together a new plant to galvanize sheet steel on one side and supply it to the stamping industry that feeds the automobile industry. In other words, the galvanizing is to eliminate the rusting out of automobiles. That is being put together right now. The factory is being built and the machinery will be coming in. It is going to hire about 1,000 people. The 300 odd people left Toledo Scale, and now there will be 1,000 in place of 300, so it balances out that way.
I will give hon. members some investment dollar figures so they will get an idea.
I mentioned that DND Galvanizing has chosen Windsor as its location, that is the Dofasco, NKK, National Steel $240 million rolling mill. And as I said, they will be doing the galvanizing operation and selling the product to the automotive industry.
Polysar Rubber Corporation, recently acquired by the German firm Bayer AG, plans to invest about $120 million over the next three years and spend $15 million on R and D in Canada per year.
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B.F. Goodrich Canada Inc. will double its PVC polymerization capacity at its Niagara Falls plant, providing an example of recent rationalization for the North American market.
Inco plans to spend $287 million in Thompson to develop a new mine and to expand an existing one, involving 100 construction jobs and 100 other new jobs in the area.
Kruger will invest $115 million in a de-inking plant at its Bromptonville, Quebec newsprint mill to source at least half the old newspaper plant in Quebec.
Pound-Maker Ethanol Canadian Ltd. will invest $12.7 million to establish a 10 million litre per year fuel-grade ethanol plant in Lanigan, Saskatchewan, which will be Canada's first integrated ethanol and feedmill capacity.
Shell, Husky and several other firms will construct a $825 million natural gas, sulphur and chemical project in west central Alberta.
Canadian National Railways will spend $15 million to build 50, "five-pack" rail cars at its Transcona car shop. Each car has five platforms and can carry as many as 10 containers. This is to be used in cross-border trade.
Dominion Textile will spend $5.5 million to modernize its Magog, Quebec industrial fabrics plant.
Inglis was selected by its parent company Whirlpool to produce trash compactors for the North American market at its Cambridge, Ontario facility and has invested more than $3 million in production changes to accommodate the operation.
Norsk Hydro Canada will spend $7 million to build a plant to convert magnesium scrap into high-purity alloys at its Becancour, Quebec plant.
Northern Telecom is spending $6 million at its La-chine, Quebec plant to double the manufacturing area for telephone switches.
One of the concerns of the member for Esquimalt- Juan de Fuca was that he thought Taco Bell was going to take over Northern Telecom. I can tell him that is not going to happen.
California based Hughes Aircraft Company has acquired Ernst Leitz Limited of Midland, Ontario and will move the optical technology work currently done in Des Plaines, Illinois to Midland.

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Harris Farinon Canada, a U.S. owned Dorval-based manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, has undertaken a $21 million research and development and expansion program based on an expanded world product mandate in microwave radio and fibre optic products. Bell Helicopter is spending over $50 million to develop and produce its fifth helicopter model in Mirabel, Quebec. Cameo of Montreal, Canada's largest appliance maker has invested $45 million in its plant in the past two years and has increased its exports to the U.S. as the main supplier of dryers and dishwashers to its American parent. Amdahl Canada increased its R and D budget to develop a new software product for world-wide distribution.
It is staggering what has been done. Yet members stand here and say we are losing business. Businesses are leaving the country and going to the United States. H. H. Robertson, a leading North American producer of preengineered building systems, is investing $1 million to automate its Hamilton plant in order to increase North American competitiveness.
Let me just stop there and tell you something else about our steel industry that just developed within the last few days. Stelco, through its subsidiary Stel-Tek, and Dofasco, Hatch Associates and Ernst Young, formed a consortium called the Canadian Consortium. They competed against two British firms, a German firm, a French firm and an American firm to supply a project being financed by the World Bank to restructure the total steel industry of Poland. That is a tremendous feather in the cap and it says something about the expertise of the people in our steel industry. They were chosen above all the others because we have a technically advanced steel industry and our expertise, according to the World Bank and the Polish officials whom I spoke to, outperforms and are farther ahead than any of the other competitors. We have just recently been involved in that and saw that that one went through.
Formica of Canada Ltd., a maker of decorative laminates, is investing $2 million to upgrade its plant in St-Jean-Sur Richelieu, Quebec. GTE Sylvania announced the closing of a lighting fixture plant in the U.S. and the relocation of activity to a more efficient plant in Mississauga. Christie Brown and Co. has invested $90 million over the past three years and increased exports to
its U.S. parent. Dupont Canada has authorized capital spending of $150 million in 1989 and $160 million in 1990, up 80 per cent from previous years and has doubled exports to the U.S. to $40 million. Dow Chemical has spent $800 million in a new ethylene-based petrochemical plant in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. Part of that decision was tariff reduction under the FTA.
Again, in my own constituency I have Voortman's Cookies. I hope everyone eats Voortman's Cookies. I will give them a free advertisement here. You can buy Voortman's Cookies right down to Florida now. They had purchased land in the United States. If the free trade agreement had not gone through, they were going to jump across the border, they had developed such an American business. The fact is they bought more land adjacent to their plant. They put an addition on there, bought additional machinery. They are now exporting 60 per cent of their production into the United States. They have now opened a plant in California because that is too far to ship cookies. It would arrive as flour when it got there.
This movement and adjustment in industry is going on and will continue to go on as markets develop, as products develop, as people see their way clear.
The investment in the pharmaceutical industry in Canada in the last few years, since we passed Bill C-22, is tremendous. The amount of R and D they are doing in this country increased. In spite of the week after week after week of hearing the NDP rise and say pharmaceutical products are going to go off the clock, that senior citizens are going to be dying because they could not get certain products, et cetera, and hearing petition after petition after petition, the reports show that pharmaceutical products have not risen as high as the inflation in the country. All you have to do is read the report from the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs.
Abbott Laboratories of Montreal announced in April of this year that it will invest $10 million to modernize its 44-year old manufacturing facilities. Xerox of Canada has expanded its toner manufacturing facility in Oakville and has made further investments in Toronto.
My colleague, the Minister of National Revenue, and I were just informed the other day that Boeing of Seattle has just awarded a $500 million contract to a company in Oakville that will be making the landing gear for its new range of passenger-carrying aircraft. This is a half a
March 15, 1991

billion dollar order to a little company in Oakville. We are picking up a little bit along the way.
Kodak of Canada announced that Canadian manufactured microfilm will be processed and converted before it is exported to the United States, adding 75 new jobs. Stelco is investing $60 million in a new pipe-making mill in Welland. Rolland Canada, Canada's second largest fine paper producer, is restructuring its manufacturing and distribution operations, including converting the Montreal mill to produce specialty industrial products.
Proctor and Gamble of Canada made a number of investments in its Canadian operations to take advantage of the FTA. I think the Minister for International Trade read more detail on that. It has now designated Canada as its source for a number of personal hygiene products for Canada.
Freightliner of Canada, a truck manufacturer, is planning to build a production facility near St. Thomas.
Those are just a few. There are more than going on every day.
When I talked about Freightliner, it caused me to stop for a moment because Freightliner is owned by Mercedes Benz, and that opens up another door of how the automotive industry is globalized.
Mack Truck is owned by Renault of France. General Motors no longer produces trucks on its own. It made a deal with Volvo and Volvo produces trucks and buses for General Motors. Volvo bought out White Motor Company. Ford Motor Company brings cars from Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Mexico. It brings in diesel trucks from Brazil, the 7000 series. Ford and Volkswagon have just got involved in a joint venture production in Brazil.
I mention these things to show how the automobile industry, as a typical example, is very globalized. General Motors produces automobiles and trucks and purchases some from Japan, Korea and Europe. Chrysler has cars made in Korea, Japan, Thailand and Mexico. It just goes on and on. That is the way trade is moving and developing as a result of GATT and the globalization of industries in general.
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I am not disturbed about the Mexico-Canada-U.S. suggested trade link. To me, it is an opportunity for us to look at a larger market again. I think it would be foolish if we were not there.
I agree with my friend from Kingston and the Islands that it would be foolhardy for Canada to sit on the sidelines and allow a negotiation to go on between the Mexicans and the Americans involving trade and not be there to see what is going on.
I support the initiative announced on February 5, my birthday, by the Prime Minister, President Bush and President Salinas of Mexico. I believe it will be an historic event when this comes across.


Sergio Marchi: Madam Speaker, I would first like to commend the member of Parliament for Haldimand-Norfolk, who has been leading the response on behalf of the Liberal Party and the Liberal caucus in his capacity as a critic in the area of international trade.
I am also pleased to be given the opportunity to debate an opposition day motion put forward by the New Democratic Party, our friends to our left. I am wondering, however, how valuable it is to have a motion that basically fantasizes where the New Democratic Party would like the government to be. We can always get involved in a debate on whether the government should or should not take a seat at the trade talks between Mexico and the United States. However, I think they are a bit late on that, very similar to the last election, Madam Speaker, as you no doubt will recall as you were in the trenches fighting for your re-election. We recall the hesitation in which the New Democratic Party fought that particular campaign. Among the multitude of issues in that federal election obviously the one major issue that dominated all other issues was whether the Canadian government ought to pursue a free trade arrangement with the United States.
At the opening press conference the former Leader of the New Democratic Party did not even mention the two words "free trade". We all know what happened to the New Democratic Party during that campaign. Obviously we were not successful, as evidenced by where we are sitting, however let it be said that when we objected to

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the agreement that was signed between our two countries we said it loudly, forcefully, clearly, and we put it squarely to Canadians. It was not a case of: "Well, we are not sure, perhaps we will talk about child care as well, maybe we will talk about this or that."
The New Democratic Party, following the last election, had a post-mortem review and the party was found to be wanting in many of the New Democratic Party's natural constituencies.
We do not need a lecture on where the party stands or stood. I think Canadians were testimony to the type of temperament that the New Democratic Party lent to the free trade debate in 1988. Now it comes with an opposition day motion. Perhaps there is great intent, perhaps there is genuine intent, but there is a lot of academic intent as well. The debate should not be "should they or should they not be" because Canadians are expecting their politicians to be discussing not flights of fantasy but flights of reality.
Whether we like it or not this government has made the decision to place itself at the table. Rather than engage Canadians in what could have been or perhaps even what should have been, I think Canadians want to be engaged in: "Okay, now that we are at the table New Democratic Party, Liberal Party, Conservative Party, what is it that Canada should be saying from its seat? What is it that Canada should be saying to the Americans and to the Mexicans who will be negotiating around that long table?" That is worth debate in this Chamber.
I would like to correct a few things, because during the course of the debate we have heard members from various sides say: "You're not in favour of freer trade". "You didn't want to go to the table". "You wanted to go under the table". The NDP say that I want to pull the chair out.
The party of which I am very proud to be a member historically has been a party that has always favoured freer trade. If there were times in our history when political parties were very much opposed to opening the road of trade between the countries of the world community, it was clearly the Conservative Party. History does not lie. Therefore, our party has always found itself trying to reform, to open, and to liberalize, in the best sense of the word, trade. We regard trade to a certain degree as the lifeblood of this country, as an encouragement to stimulate the economy and jobs.
Where we distinguish ourselves from our hon. friends on the other side is the type of agreement that we would want to enter into with the United States of America or with another country. Therefore, the distinguishing feature should not be that this party was against freer trade but that this party fought with no apologies in 1988, led admirably by our former leader, the right hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, for a very different kind of agreement. The type of agreement they had put their signature to was an agreement that we hoped would not materialize. Unfortunately, as we look across the land we see that our prognosis was correct, as we try to see, in the aftermath of free trade, where the success stories are.
The members on the other side pointed to "All the Fallen Sparrows", that was a quote used by one of my colleagues. Listening to the hon. member who spoke before me, the member for Burlington, when he referred to some factory making cookies, you would figure that every cookie that gets baked is because of free trade. That is an argument we should discount pretty readily. Therefore, we ought to be taking a look at what the adjustment has been after the trade agreement that was signed by the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States.
I am hard pressed to see where the success stories have been. I am hard pressed to believe that it has helped us more than it has hurt us. I see, in my own backyard in Toronto, that not every job that is lost can be blamed on or pinned simply on the free trade agreement.
I have talked to many businessmen, I have had calluses on my hands when I worked in construction putting myself through university, I am also the son of a Canadian who owns a small business himself. I am able to meet, as I have, with business interests in my community and outside my community of York West, and I am trying with those Canadians to see how free trade has encouraged a greater number of jobs, encouraged greater expansion of our industry. It has done the opposite in the grand scheme, whether in the case of energy, in the case of manufacturing, in the case of furniture, or in the case of many industries that I have in my own industrial parkland in York West. It was supposed to be a bonanza, it was supposed to be a Messiah for the creation of thousands upon thousands of jobs, for the American firms to come here and build their factories. Instead, what we have become is a warehouse economy.
March 15, 1991

The Americans do not have to come to our country and build factories to produce products and therefore create jobs; they are not doing that. What are they doing in some of their industries? What they are doing in the States where they have their plants is augmenting their production by a number of hours, they produce incredible quantities of those goods, then they ship them to Canada where they rent a warehouse and we become truck drivers. We become distributors of products under that free trade regime. Where are the job spin-offs in Canada? Certainly not in the truck industry. They are being produced in the States, where they are augmenting the number of hours and production lines to meet the Canadian market.
Where is the research and development in driving trucks and in setting up warehouses? There is none. Where is the wealth creation that we spoke about, that we were promised? Instead, those industries that cannot compete with the Americans, which cannot possibly compete with the economies of scale, flowing against logic, are going out of business. They are beginning to downsize. They are beginning to consider going south of the border. That is a reality that has been bom in the advent of the so-called free trade Messiah between our two countries.
Who speaks for the workers 45, 50, 55 years of age when a plant closes because it says it cannot compete any longer? What does the hon. member for Burlington and other members of Parliament who face such people in their constituencies tell the person who is 55 and has worked 30 years in a plant which all of a sudden gets shut down? No one wants to invest in a 55-year-old, or not readily so, despite a wealth of experience.
That 55-year old Canadian still may have a mortgage to pay, still may have kids going through university, still may be required to work another five, to seven, to ten years to make ends meet. What do we tell a worker after this Prime Minister promised the country during the last election that he and his government would deliver the best transition programs the world has ever known?


An hon. member:: Another broken promise.


Sergio Marchi: It is not only a broken promise, but it is absolutely unacceptable and irresponsible to say those
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things without fulfilling those promises. Men and women who are displaced at least had a hope that if things were going to go wrong in the free trade agreement, if there were firms and industries and sectors of our economy that were not going to be able to compete as well or as strong with the Americans, at least had a glimmer of hope that there would somehow be some catch, some adjustment program, some capacity to take them and say: "Look, under the free trade agreement your business or sector did not have the technology, did not have the manpower, did not have the know-all to compete. That firm or sector is going to fall, but we are going to take you and employ you in this other industry".
On the one hand, we do not have the economic wealth being generated that was promised. On the other hand, we have unemployed workers across this country who are hurting and hurting badly.
It is also not solely free trade. It is a comprehensive situation facing the Canadian economy and the Canadian worker in that Canadian economy. We could combine the advent of free trade that has hurt us more than it has helped us. One of the reasons I question our friends in the New Democratic Party so that perhaps there are two options to that table with Mexico. Their option is not to be there, even though the government said it will be, but the other option if we are there is to stop the misery that they speak of in their motion which says:
This House calls upon the government to avoid a worsening of the
social and economic hardship-
My preferred option is to give the Government of Canada a set of marching orders to utilize at that table, to reopen the existing agreement between the United States and Canada, and to say to our friends on the government benches that we are hurting and we are hurting badly in these sectors; that now they have a golden opportunity, as our trade critic has said, to reopen the deal and revisit energy, for instance.
Who in their right mind would treat Americans as Canadians in times of energy crisis? Show me one country that has agreements of that magnitude in terms of energy self-sufficiency, and I will sit down in my place. There is not one country that would give away its energy to another country and treat it as it would its own citizens and its own economy.

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I find it completely irresponsible for a Canadian government to treat American sources as its own nationals. That is a giveaway. However, what I am suggesting is perhaps we can convince them to reopen them. How do we reopen it if we are not at the table? How do we revisit something if no one is talking, no one is debating, and no one is negotiating? How would they suggest that the misery stop, if we don't try to ask this government to use the occasion to tell the Americans that on a number of fronts we would like to cross the t's and dot the i's in a very different way?
When the question of the free trade agreement is put together, we also have to add to the equation of our economy the question of high interest rates, the question of our high Canadian dollar, the question that we are now going through a very bad recession that makes the 1981-82 period virtually a cakewalk with whomever we speak to. The real cost of interest rates now are higher costs. The difference between American interest rates and Canadian interest rates in 1982 was negligible; right now there is a differential.
In 1981 and 1982 Canadians were still working. Ask people in the construction industry, ask people in our trades industry, ask people in the housing market, ask whomever you wish, wherever they are, a very simple question, whether this recession is worse than the one in 1981-82 which happened to be an international one, unlike this "made-in-Canada" recession, especially by Tories.


Patrick (Pat) Anthony Sobeski: Tell that to first-time buyers who are finally getting into the Toronto market.


Sergio Marchi: It is nice to have the members opposite awake finally. It took us six hours but they are finally awake.
The final variable, or another one, is also the question of the tax structure in this country, the question of the GST. When we begin to put all those variables together, is it any wonder that we are in a recession? Is it any wonder that the economy slowly but surely and gradually and consistently is being strangled?
To make matters worse, we just came off the heels of a budget some three weeks ago. Did the budget offer inspiration? Did the budget offer some employment stimulus? Did the budget try to inspire a nation out of
the pit of recession into which it was placed by this government?
The Minister of Finance always gets up and says: "Oh, boy, when those Liberals were in government during 1981-82 they threw money at their problems".


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: We had good government then.


Sergio Marchi: We did not throw money at our problems. The government of 1981-82 recognized that we were living through an international recession. Rather than do nothing, as this government advocates in its budget, the government of the time created labour intensive and capital works programs.
Why? Because it tried to assist its citizens to survive and live through the recession of 1981-82. Then we had unprecedented growth in 1984-85-86-87.
What does the government do in its recession that it got us into? The responsibility of a government is to say: "If we have to spend a few dollars to help Canadians get back to work, if we can inject some inspiration into the economy, if we can kick-start the engine, then we are a government that is showing leadership".
Where is the leadership of a government that throws the country into a recession and then pulls a Pontius Pilate and says: "We can't spend. If you are hurting we feel bad, but we can't do anything about it"?
Canadians deserve better. Canadians would want us to try to inject the economy with some stimulus, because if we are stimulated as an economy then the revenues come back. If no one is working, if plants are closing two to three weeks at a time, if they are downsizing, if Canadians are walking the streets unemployed and we are paying UIC, when will we come out of our recession? When will we put Canadians back to work? When are factories going to hum again? When are we going to get the 24-hour cycles again in factories?
We won't, as long as this government persists in taking the stand of simply backing off the problems rather than trying to help Canadians survive the dark times.
Yes, there will be good times again. We need to recognize that. There are cycles, but let us help Canadians during the down cycles and then reap the fruits of their labour during the good cycles.
March 15, 1991

I would love to go on a little further. I seek unanimous consent. If I do not receive it, it has been a pleasure and I will see you next week.


Madam Deputy Speaker:: Are there questions or comments?
The hon. member was seeking consent to continue, but I see there are some members rising on question and comment.


Patrick (Pat) Anthony Sobeski: Madam Speaker, just a very quick question.
The hon. member referred to a budget three weeks ago that he thought was extremely regressive. Last week, we saw the province of Newfoundland and its Liberal premier come out with a budget that seemed to follow the same types of spending controls as exhibited by the finance minister. I would like the hon. member to explain to me how that Liberal government's budget is going to turn things around when he also seems to recognize that there is a tremendous debt burden.
Would the hon. member please explain to Canadians why Premier Wells, a hero across Canada, is taking a tough stand just like this federal government.


Sergio Marchi: Madam Speaker, first, let me say two things.
Premier Wells, in his own riding, is much more popular than the Prime Minister. Second, if the gentleman was somewhat more honest, he would have also told Canadians that the budget of Newfoundland came after a federal budget that basically slashed and passed on the deficit reduction to the provinces.
We were not surprised. We said, on the night of the budget, through our finance critic, Mr. Gray, the hon. member for Windsor West, through our Deputy Leader, Ms. Copps, the hon. member for Hamilton East, and through subsequent speakers, that when the government talks in the federal budget about deficit reduction, when it talks about the medicare system and the cutbacks that it would be pushing the problem to the top.


Mr. Attewell:: On a point of order, Madam Speaker, I believe the hon. member called my hon. friend here dishonest. I would like him to withdraw that remark.
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Madam Deputy Speaker:: Of course, I will give the hon. member for York West the opportunity to explain or withdraw.
I would also bring to his attention, if I may, that he has been in the House at least as long as I have been in the House. He knows that members do not refer to their colleagues by their names, but by the name of their ridings. Giving the name of their ridings after does not make the first line correct.


Sergio Marchi: You are absolutely right, Madam Speaker, I should know better.
In terms of my use of the word "dishonest" I did not mean it against the hon. member at all. I withdraw that word completely and without any problem.
What I tried to point out is that the question of the Newfoundland budget was not an initiation but a response to the economic tightrope that was left after the government in Ottawa presented its budget which pushed deficit reduction on to the provinces and which cut the amounts of moneys with which provincial governments can administer their health and higher education systems.
I predict that the Government of Newfoundland will not be the only provincial government across the land to do this. That is part of the problem. We are going to see a domino effect as a result of the federal Government of Canada that has been sending the wrong signals and imposing the wrong commitments. The provincial governments will have to take care of their provincial treasuries and respond accordingly.
That is where the lack of leadership comes from. That is why it is important for a federal government to have a breadth of vision of the country it represents and leads. It has to have a sense that governments such as the Government of Newfoundland, given the difficult economic straits that it finds itself in, that every action in this place has a reaction elsewhere.
I am suggesting to the hon. member that the actions of provincial governments, be they Newfoundland or Manitoba or in other provincial capitals, when they present their budgets have the seed planted in this federal budget.
That is why we have been waging this debate in this Chamber, to try to bring the government to its senses, change its budget and do things that are going to kick-start the economy rather than continue this recession.

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Madam Deputy Speaker:: It being 3.55 p.m., it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 81(17), the proceedings on the motion have expired.
Therefore, this House stands adjourned until next Monday at 1 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 3.55 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Monday, March 18, 1991