Order!

Mr. Pagtakhan:

Please do not prejudge my thought. I am asking for your help, Mr. Speaker, as a matter of privilege and parliamentary inquiry. I heard the Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie) refer to the absence of an Hon. Member in his remark earlier, and I would like to be guided. Is it in fact within the rules of this House to do that? As a new Member I would like to be guided.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

There is a rule in the House that an Hon. Member should not talk about the absence or the presence, for that matter, of a particular Hon. Member. The rule does exist. I do not recall the incident that the Hon. Member refers to. However, I will look at Hansard, and if need be, I will return to the House on the matter.

In the mean time, on questions and comments, I recognize the Hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

Mr. Siddon:

Mr. Speaker, I have, together with my colleagues in this House, listened for many minutes now to the Hon. Member for Regina Qu'Appelle (Mr. de Jong) expound on these special theories of economic philosophy, this model that he tends to focus on which has done so much good for the world.

I want the Hon. Member to understand that I am proud to be part of a caring Government that cares for the people of Canada. I am proud that we have a caring Minister for International Trade (Mr. Crosbie) and a caring Prime Minister (Mr. Mulroney).

Hear, hear!

Mr. Siddon:

I think we too often hear this notion that the socialists of the country have a monopoly on caring, and that is the greatest hypocrisy one can imagine when one puts it in the context of the disinformation campaign they used throughout the preceding election campaign to confuse Canadians and to try to somehow suggest that members of this Party and this Government do not care about the future of our children in this country we all love so dearly.

We have heard the Hon. Member talk about models as if he were an academic. I would like to suggest to him that I thank the Lord that this Hon. Member is not

December 22, 1988

teaching my children in a Canadian university. He is essentially saying that the models of neo-socialism-he did not use that phrase but that is what he is preaching-have somehow been the great success story of history when the exact opposite is the truth. Communism is an unnatural form of economic management, as is the form of socialism which the Hon. Member advocates.

One of the two questions I want to ask the Hon. Member this evening is: Why have these neo-socialist theories, which have been tried in Canada by several provincial Governments, led by the Party of which he is a member, and imposed upon Canada by the recent Liberal Governments of former Prime Minister Trudeau, failed so miserably to deal with the poverty and the regional disadvantages in Canada? Why is it that the more we pump regional equalization and redistribution of wealth into the more impoverished parts of Canada, the more their incentive, productivity, and economic well-being have been reduced? Why have these neo-socialist Governments driven up the deficit, creating more poverty in the regions of Canada that need help the most.

Before the Hon. Member responds, I would like to ask a second question. The second question has to do with the unprecedented turnaround in the Canadian economy which has occurred over the past four and a half year tenure of the Government of which I am proud to be a member.

I want the Hon. Member to tell the Members of this House and the people of Canada why he so denounces the very economic theories which have created the greatest increase in productivity, employment, opportunity, and confidence in our future that this country has seen in this century.

The Hon. Member is a member of a Party that came into this House in November of 1984 and decried the policies of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson), saying they would produce 150,000 more unemployed Canadians. Then, in the following four and a half years, we found that 1.3 million Canadians went back to work, 80 per cent of them gaining full-time employment. We saw Canada rise from being seventh among industrialized nations-

Mr. de Jong:

Are you going to let me answer? Are you going to sit down or not?

Mr. Siddon:

Perhaps the Hon. Member will allow me to complete my remarks. We saw this country rise from

Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

being seventh among the industrialized nations of the world to being number one, becoming a leading member of the G-7. The second question which the Hon. Member will want to answer-

Mr. de Jong:

All you are doing is giving a little speech.

Mr. Siddon:

You just made a little speech yourself.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

Order, please. The Hon. Member for Regina-Qu'Appelle now has the floor.

Mr. de Jong:

Mr. Speaker, it is a slippery Minister we have. No wonder he is the Minister of Fisheries. What a slippery Minister he is.

Mr. Siddon:

Answer the question.

Mr. de Jong:

Well, many questions were asked by the Minister. Let us start off with the Minister saying that they care. The question is: What do they care about? What does this Government care about?

Mr. Siddon:

People.

Mr. de Jong:

He says "people". I really wonder. When the Minister for International Trade was in Newfoundland politics, when Newfoundland was trying to decide where to go, he wanted Newfoundland to join the United States. That is our Minister for International Trade.

The Prime Minister was the head of an American company and shut down a Canadian branch plant, so that is what the Prime Minister cares about. In Saskatchewan we have a Premier and a Tory Party. In fact, the former Leader of that Conservative Party in Saskatchewan left the Conservative Party and started the Unionist Party. The Unionist Party wanted Canada to join the United States.

We see this hidden strain within the Conservative Party that has been there for many years. What it really cares about is for us to become another state of the United States. We have seen it in the actions of the Prime Minister and the Minister for International Trade. We certainly know all about it in Saskatchewan where we have seen provincial Conservative Members sitting in the Legislature, starting a Unionist Party and advocating that we join the United States.

In Saskatchewan we know what those people cared about. That is why we defeated so many of them. The

December 22, 1988

Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

people of Saskatchewan did not want anything to do with what those people really cared about.

Members opposite talk about the economic wonders of the Government. Let us step back a second. When it got into power in 1984, it got into power at the end of one of the most severe recessions, a recession that had been deliberately done by the western economies in order to put an end to the high inflation. The western industrialized nations jacked up interest rates, threw their economies into reverse, which resulted in very high levels of unemployment. Of course, with the nature of Canada's economy mainly being a branch plant, and one that is very dependent on raw resources, it was one of the first to be hit by the recession. Canada was also one of the last to get out. The Tories were lucky that they came into power at the end of that recessionary cycle.

When one looks at where things are today compared with 1981 before the recession period, family income has not gone back to where it was before. The reason family income is higher now than it was in 1984 is that more families are now two-income families. In fact, the average young working family needs two incomes to put a roof over its head and supply the basic necessities of life.

There is more employment now than there was in 1984, but certainly things have not come back to where there were in 1981 before the recession started. We still do not accept levels of 7 per cent, 6 per cent, or 5 per cent unemployment. I suspect that the Tories like to have a little bit of extra unemployment, because after all it does keep wages down and it does help their corporate friends.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

The Hon. Member for Sarnia- Lambton, on a question or comment.

Mr. James:

I wish to make a comment to the Hon. Member for Regina-Qu'Appelle (Mr. de Jong) who talked about studies not being conducted.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

The Hon. Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, on a point of order.

Mr. Siddon:

I wanted to offer an observation that the Hon. Member has not answered either of the questions posed. The fact of the matter is that the Government that gave Canada good economic management is also giving Canada free trade, and he is afraid to admit it.