Mr. Wayne Easter (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, it is not a sell-out deal. This moves fish to Canada. We can look at Fraser River sockeye for instance. The United States share under this agreement will be 16.5%. This compares with last year where their share was 24.9% and where the historical average was 20.5% between 1985 and 1986. That is moving fish to Canada.

This agreement is for Canadians and for the future of the fisheries. The member should be congratulating the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Government of Canada for negotiating this agreement, with no thanks to the B.C. government.

Mr. Jim Jones (Markham, PC)

Mr. Speaker, yesterday Ontario voters re-elected a Conservative government that cut taxes by 30%. They gave Mike Harris a strong mandate to continue cutting taxes for Ontario families, communities and businesses. This morning Premier Harris said that federal taxes are too high and are a barrier to job creation, investment and growth.

My question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. When will the Liberals follow the lead of Mike Harris and cut taxes?

Hon. Herb Gray (Deputy Prime Minister, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, our first task was to eliminate the $42 billion deficit burden created by the Conservative government of Mr. Mulroney of which the member is a current spokesman. We eliminated that deficit and we moved to a balanced budget. At the same time, we have begun massive tax reductions of $16.5 billion over the next three years.

We do not need to follow Mike Harris' lead on this. We are doing this through a mandate from the Canadian people, including those in Ontario. Unlike Mike Harris, we are not doing this with one cent of borrowed money.

Mr. Jim Jones (Markham, PC)

Mr. Speaker, the federal Liberals broke promise after promise, from free trade to the GST, from health care to an independent ethics counsellor. The Harris Conservatives took a different approach. They said what they would do before an election and actually delivered. While the Liberals are the party of trickery, cynicism and low integrity, the Conservatives are the party of honesty, hope and opportunity.

Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell Ontario voters why they should trust the Liberals when Conservative policies have caused Ontario to grow and the federal government to balance its books?

Hon. Herb Gray (Deputy Prime Minister, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, the Ontario voters have already said what they think of the federal Conservative Party. I am sure they are going to give a similar verdict in the next federal election and return an overwhelming number of federal Liberals.

Mr. Darrel Stinson (Okanagan—Shuswap, Ref.)

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Trade.

Due to the new ruling by U.S. customs on softwood lumber, thousands of Canadian forestry jobs and even the fate of some Canadian companies are threatened. Why has the government allowed Canada's softwood lumber trade with the Americans to suffer this new blow? Were the trade officials too busy defending the magazine industry to recognize this new serious threat of the softwood lumber agreement?

Hon. Sergio Marchi (Minister for International Trade, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, I think the member rather than joke about incredible non-starting comparisons should treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.

We have an agreement that his province and that industry urged the federal government to get into two and a half years ago. It is obviously disappointing that the Americans are trying to expand the focus of this agreement. We have taken action. We have taken action against them at the world customs. The world customs has agreed with us again. If they continue to persist on the softwood rougher headed issue, we will continue to take action against them.

Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, Ref.)

Mr. Speaker, we know of the action the government has taken at the world customs, but there has been no action taken on this most recent decision on the rougher headed lumber. Whatever happened to the five years of lumber peace the Liberals promised by signing the softwood lumber agreement?

It does not matter if it is softwood or split-runs, we are getting the same scripted answers. Canadians want to know what specifically will the government do before parliament rises to guarantee that these forest workers do not lose their jobs?

Hon. Sergio Marchi (Minister for International Trade, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, we have an agreement with the United States. It is an agreement that was agreed to by all the four provinces within the agreement and by the entire industry from one coast to the other. The member knows this.

Now the commodity sector has come under great pressure both in Canada and the United States. That clearly does not justify the single-handed action the United States has taken. We will use every possible aspect of this agreement as well as the world customs and NAFTA to redress in the proper way the proper functioning of the agreement between our two countries.

Mr. Stéphan Tremblay (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ)

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs made a very troubling statement. He said the agreements signed by officials of the federal government and those of a provincial government would not be binding on governments and that, accordingly, cabinet was not obliged to honour them.

Does the Minister of Human Resources Development think that his negotiator will have the trust of the Government of Quebec on the millennium scholarships after what the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs said and after what occurred in the matter of Nanoose Bay?

Hon. Pierre S. Pettigrew (Minister of Human Resources Development, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, what I understand is that the other agreement the member for Lac-Saint-Jean is referring to—

Oh, oh.

Order, please. The hon. Minister of Human Resources Development.

Hon. Pierre S. Pettigrew

Mr. Speaker, as the member for Lac-Saint-Jean has just said, I can say one thing, and that is that the agreement had been signed by officials. That is what the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs was referring to.

In the matter of the millennium scholarships, I can reassure the member for Lac-Saint-Jean that the representative of the Government of Canada enjoys my full confidence and that of our government.

There will soon be another meeting between the representatives of the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada. I am confident that we will resolve this dispute very soon so that Quebec students may enjoy the millennium scholarships.

Mr. Stéphan Tremblay (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ)

Mr. Speaker, it is all very well to play a semantics game and call someone a facilitator when in fact they are a negotiator. Basically, is the mandate of the federal facilitator not simply to facilitate the life of the Minister of Human Resources Development by providing him with a pretext to avoid getting on with it and assuming his ministerial responsibilities?

Hon. Pierre S. Pettigrew (Minister of Human Resources Development, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, when there are technicalities and administrative standards it is absolutely clear that we trust our officials to come up with solutions and ways to harmonize the systems.

Once the issue becomes political, it is clear that the ministers must speak to each other. I can assure the hon. member that minister Legault and myself are on the very same wavelength. We are equally impatient.

For myself, I count on reaching an agreement so that Quebec students may benefit from something to which they are entitled. The Government of Canada wants to help them finance their studies more easily.

Mr. Charlie Penson (Peace River, Ref.)

Mr. Speaker, there is a bill before the Michigan legislature that if passed would impose a tax of over 2% on Canadian companies selling into Michigan. Should this legislation go ahead, the cost to Canadian companies, especially the automotive sector would be more than $100 million per year.

What is the trade minister doing to ensure that this legislation which flies in the face of the principle of national treatment never gets passed?

Hon. Sergio Marchi (Minister for International Trade, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, the member is correct in raising a very serious issue which I think is going to be equally negative for companies from Canada doing business in Michigan and for the state of Michigan. I think it is going to discourage and scare away trade and investment in that state.

We have for the last number of months been dealing directly with the office of Governor Engler. We have been able to persuade him to take away the retroactivity going back 10 years. The fact remains that for companies doing business in the state of Michigan he is still contemplating at this time imposing a 2% tax.

Mr. Gary Lunn (Saanich—Gulf Islands, Ref.)

Mr. Speaker, we know the government's spin doctors are working overtime selling the Pacific salmon treaty and we now see that the parliamentary secretary is becoming part of that spin machine.

Let us look at the facts. We know the minister is afraid to bring this treaty before the House of Commons. We know the minister has and will spend millions of dollars buying prime time media to sell this deal to the Canadian people. We know the minister announced this deal in a room full of Americans and hired armed police to keep Canadian fishermen out of the room.

If this is such a good deal for Canada, why the armed police? Why does he have to spend taxpayers' money to sell this deal? Whose side is he on? The Americans, obviously not ours.

Mr. Wayne Easter (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Lib.)

Mr. Speaker, we have seen from past action that the kind of tactics the hon. member opposite takes on does nothing for the negotiations. When we want to get a good message out there, we have to get it out.

Had this new arrangement been in place between 1985 and 1996 there would have been 4.1 million more fish available to Canadian fishermen. That is a good deal. The hon. member, as the Vancouver Sun did this morning, should be congratulating the minister. It said that the minister certainly deserves—