Mr. de Jong:

I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Let the record also show that what the Minister stated was not a point of order.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

I think we should proceed with the question and comments of the Hon. Member for Sarnia-Lambton who has been seeking the floor for some time.

A point of order from the Hon. Member for Burlington.

Mr. Kempling:

I wanted to make a comment or a question to the Hon. Member for Regina-Qu'Appelle.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

On questions or comments the floor w'ill be given to the Hon. Member for Sarnia- Lambton.

Mr. James:

I wanted to make a couple of comments in connection with the comments made by the Hon. Member for Regina-Qu'Appelle. He made mention that studies have not been done, or that he did not receive studies. Perhaps the Hon. Member did not go over to the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion. It conducted a number of studies. One was done on petrochemicals and how they would be affected by the Free Trade Agreement. For the information of the Hon. Member, I would like to mention what the study states about the petrochemical possibilities under free trade.

It states that the FTA will have different impacts upon the gas based and oil based segments of the petrochemical industry. In addition, there could be investment opportunities for a range of aromatic products where the historically higher U.S. tariffs have prevented access to the U.S. market. It states that over all the FTA will have a positive impact on the industry. The elimination of tariffs will increase existing exports and will open the U.S. market to a range of oil-based products now excluded by high tariffs. Investment prospects for additional facilities to supply the North American market have been improved. These opportunities will include products based upon competitively priced primary petrochemicals such as polypropylene and aromatics.

Many studies were conducted by the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion that indicated the positive impact of the Free Trade Agreement. I cannot imagine why the Hon. Member has not taken the time to read these important studies.

The Hon. Member also mentioned public support of our social services, our identity, and our sovereignty. The socialists never want to talk about history, but if the Hon. Member looks at the historical events in Canada from 1935, as we have ever liberalized trade with the United States, he will find that those are the very same

December 22, 1988

years that the public sector introduced veteran's allowance, unemployment insurance, family allowances, old age security, spousal allowances, and medicare. The socialists never want to talk about history.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

On a point of order, the Hon. Member for Gloucester.

Mr. Young (Gloucester):

Could the Chair indicate to the House whether or not we are continuing with debate on this matter, or are we still in the period for questions and comments? It seemed to me that, under the rules, there was a time limit on the period reserved for questions and comments.

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

The Hon. Member is in the question and comment period.

Mr. Young (Gloucester):

What is the time period allocated for the speech, as well as for questions and comments after those speeches?

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

The time for the speech is 20 minutes. The time for questions and comments is 10 minutes. At the discretion of the Chair, sometimes the 10-minute period for questions and comments is extended. For instance, if a member commences in the ninth minute, the Chair does not intervene and limit the question or the time for the person to answer to 30 seconds. That is discretionary, and the Chair will do its best to make sure that the rule is enforced.

The Hon. Member for Sarnia-Lambton.

Mr. James:

I wished to mention to my hon. friend in speaking to his concern about social policy development in Canada that through the years from 1935 to 1988 we have liberalized our trade with the United States, lowering tariffs from an average of 30 per cent down to an average of 9 per cent or 8 per cent, and have entered into additional major trading agreements with the United States-for example, the Auto Pact and defence sharing.

Over the years carrying on through until child care was introduced, at the same time as we were negotiating the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, we have ever built that social policy and that social safety net in Canada.

That has been done by the Liberals and the Conservatives, certainly not the socialists because they were never in power to do that. If we followed through those very same years we would find that the economic wherewithal in Canada has ever increased and that our cultural

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development has increased through those very same years.

Mr. de Jong:

I think the point made by the Hon. Member goes against the free trade legislation, rather than supporting it.

The point I made earlier in my remarks is that this country, from the point of view of its culture and its economy, regardless of the Government in power, has evolved as a mix.

We recognize that there is a need to have both the private and public sectors involved in the economy, though there may be disagreement as to degree.

The Free Trade Agreement will restrict the public sector to a degree to which all previous Governments in this country would have taken exception. It is the economic philosophy of the neo-right, the near right, that will change the political-cultural mix of this country, and that is what we find so unacceptable. We are becoming more market oriented. Our health services and other services will be more and more determined by market forces, as opposed to a system based upon taking care of human needs, as was recommended by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and others in this country.

That was a statement made by the Canadian Conference of Bishops in 1983, and it is one that I think continues to be valid today.

Of course, it may be that the Minister is not at all concerned with what the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has to say.

Mr. Arnold Malone (Crowfoot):

Mr. Speaker, every Parliament has its own emotion, and certainly that is true of this the Thirty-fourth Parliament.

I concur with the statement by the Hon. Member for Renfrew (Mr. Hopkins) that this Parliament has in it some extraordinary talent. The speeches thus far have been excellent. That is obviously the result of an election campaign that had a single issue, an issue which has prepared Hon. Members for a unique session of Parliament, a session dedicated to that same issue.

Like the Hon. Member for Macleod (Mr. Hughes), I should like to start with a brief background of my riding.

The constituency of Macleod, I might say, takes its name from Colonel Macleod of the Northwest Mounted

December 22, 1988

Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement

Police, an individual who is a part of the prairie heritage dating back to the mid-1800s. The same is true of Chief Crowfoot, after whom my riding is named.

Crowfoot was born a Blood, in what is now Montana. He migrated into the northern part of southern Alberta and was adopted into the Blackfoot tribe, becoming a chief of the Blackfoot Nation, and eventually becoming the most powerful and the wisest of the chiefs of the Blackfoot territory, taking in the full lands of the Sarcee, the Peguis, and the Blackfoot.

Crowfoot was recognized on several occasions by Sir John A. Macdonald. Because of his wisdom, his counsel was sought by Ottawa. He was a person who, in his early years, was a nomad who followed the buffalo herds.

As I said at the outset, every Parliament has its own unique emotion. We are all here to do what we can and what we feel is best for our constituents.

Perhaps before I go any further, I should take a moment to extend my sympathies to those from among us who are ill and hospitalized.

As all Hon. Members will be aware, one of the successful candidates for the Progressive Conservative Party died within days of his having been elected to Parliament. His only desire was to have the opportunity of serving his constituents and his country.

I also note that an Hon. Member from the Liberal benches is also quite ill and is in fact hospitalized at this moment.

I hearken back to the time that Colonel Macleod and Chief Crowfoot met at what is now Gleichen, Alberta for the signing of Treaty No. 7. Here was Chief Crowfoot, a person born a Blood and raised a Blackfoot, an individual who did not know the English language, and yet we can see from annals of the Northwest Mounted Police the words of wisdom he imparted to us. On the occasion of the signing of Treaty No. 7, it was recorded in the annals of the Northwest Mounted Police that he made the following remarks:

In a little while I will be gone from amongst you. Whither I come and whither I go, 1 do not know. What is life? It is like the flash of the firefly in the night; it is like the breath of the buffalo in the wintertime; it is like the little shadow that races across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Those are poetic words. And here we are as Members of Parliament with our own "flash of a firefly in the night"; an opportunity to do something in the time that

we are here, an opportunity to act in accordance with the reasons for which we were elected.

I feel privileged to have served in this House during a period when our Constitution, imperfect as it might be, was patriated, and I believe that in the same way the trade arrangement that we are about to enter into with the United States of America will change the nature of our country. It brings with it for my part of the country the enormity of hope that has been heretofore lacking.

Western Canadians felt alienated from the mainstream of Canadian life as a consequence of the unfair and discriminatory freight rates favouring central Canada. Those discriminatory freight rates led to western Canada exporting its raw materials as opposed to upgrading them, enhancing them.

While the grain was grown in Saskatchewan, the flour was milled elsewhere. We had the coal, but we did not have the industries that used the coal; we had the forests, but we had no upgrading facilities. Our products were all exported in raw form.

The other major impediment to the betterment of western Canada has been tariffs. Let me give some examples that I believe can be easily understood.

Malt barley is grown in western Canada and exported to the U.S. I am one who advocates that we ought not to be exporting malt barley in the volumes that we are. All that needs to be done to malt barley is to add energy and water, and the result is malt. But why don't we export malt to the U.S.? It is because raw product attracts no tariff, whereas manufactured or processed products do.

Looking at the latest figures on that, in July of 1988 malt barley was selling for $80 a tonne. If you add energy and water, it sells for $160 a tonne. How could either a Liberal or socialist then want to give up the right to bring down tariffs?

What about the natural gas and petrochemical industry? When we convert the natural gas to methane and ethane products and sell them in the U.S., we have to climb over 16 per cent and 18 per cent tariffs. Natural gas is tariff-free and it is going down the pipeline to the U.S. every day. And every day along with the natural gas go the jobs of our sons and daughters. That has made us and continues to make us the producers of raw materials without the capacity to value add, to process, and to manufacture.

December 22, 1988

We have the enormous advantage of the Auto Pact which in its 23 or 24 years has seen $500 billion of foreign investment in southern Ontario. We want that kind of investment to bring stability to the western basin.

I could hardly believe what happened in the 1972 economic summit in Tokyo where Canada agreed to sell shiploads of whole logs, mostly from British Columbia, to Japan. Having detopped and debranched those trees, we loaded them on ships and sent them to Japan. Each of us knows intuitively that if the Japanese had the forest they would be selling us prefabricated homes, labelled on the side in five languages for shipment around the world.

That is the kind of advantage Canada has and must have. We are the only nation in the western industrial world that does not have a guaranteed market of 100 million people. We have only 25 million. What an unnatural market it is, stretched out across 5,500 miles. It is only in southern Ontario and western Quebec that it is a real, normal market. Yet just below Alberta, just below Saskatchewan, just below the Atlantic region, exist large markets where we can ship our value-added products.

To what purpose? My friend from Regina- Qu'Appelle talked about social programs. It is not a case of one Party caring more than another Party. We all care. However, if you are a Progressive Conservative, you can afford to care. We must have the wealth. It does one no good at all to care, to say I love these people. If you cannot generate the wealth to help those people, one is simply whistling past the graveyard.

Through the course of the election we heard all these funny arguments about how this agreement would destroy our sovereignty, our nationality, and take away our social programs. Then toward the end of the election we heard how it would ruin our environment.

I want to make the point that I believe precisely the opposite will happen. It will help our environment to have a trade relationship with the U.S. We are about 15 years from the baby boomers becoming the senior citizens of our country. When that happens, you will be able to draw a very interesting graph which will look like an upside down thermometer with a narrow column of workers and a big balloon on top of senior citizens who require social services and medicare. If we do not take our raw materials, process them, turn them into manufactured goods, thereby creating more jobs, then the only way we can shoulder the burden that will start

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15 years from now is to sell even greater and greater amounts of our raw resources. We will have to cut down more trees, destroy more forests, and sell them abroad. It is time to pause and say "Let's get smart like the Japanese".

For those in the NDP who get so nervous about the notion of foreign investment, I ask them: Is Germany threatened in some way because of the foreign investment that put that country on its feet after World War II? Japan was devastated in World War II. It was foreign investment for an extended period of time that put that country on its feet. They welcomed foreign investment. It made them an economic power today.

One-third of the wealth of this nation is dependent upon trade. We are more dependent upon trade than any other nation in the world with the exception of West Germany. Unlike the beginning of this century when most of our trade was with the mother country, Great Britain, almost 80 per cent of our exports go to the U.S. Yet, when our Government came to office in 1984, there were over 400 pieces of protectionist legislation on the table in State Legislatures and in Washington which would, in whole or in part, impact negatively on Canada.

Those who like to say that the Free Trade Agreement is not the answer have to tell us what they would do for a nation so dependent upon trade for its wealth. If they do not respond to that question in a specific way, then they commit the citizens of this country to diminishing social programs, weakened sovereignty, weakened identity, and weakened culture. It is trade that allows us to grow and develop the richness of our culture.

I want to address for a moment the question of "they are so big and we are so small, therefore the U.S. will always win". First, bear in mind that in the 14 trade associations in the world, in virtually every case, the smallest country has grown the most. All the economies involved grew but the smallest one grew the most. Bear in mind that Canadians are better educated. We have better health delivery systems. If Japan is going to build a Toyota plant in North America, why would they not locate in Canada and take advantage of our education and health systems? Those systems will attract foreign investment from around the world. We raise better pork and beef, and cheaper, too. We have better telecommunications systems than the U.S. does. We produce automobiles cheaper than it does.

We do many things better than the U.S. because we are competitive. We can compete and this notion that we are so small and they are so big is exactly the same

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argument we heard when the Auto Pact was introduced. We were told they would run over us, and here we are exporting two out of every three cars that we build.

My time is up, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the House for giving me its attention. I apologize to the Hon. Member for Regina-Qu'Appelle (Mr. de Jong) because he did not have an opportunity to ask his question, but I do feel somewhat relieved.

December 22, 1988

Mr. Deputy Speaker:

It being one minute past midnight, pursuant to the Order agreed to on Friday December 16, 1988, the House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. today.