Discussion · Government Orders
Garnett Genuis Conservative
“I support trading with more countries around the world. The previous Conservative government signed trade deals with many nations. The Liberals failed to build the infrastructure needed to take advantage of those deals.”
“Mr. Speaker, not only do I support diversifying our trade, but I worked as a staffer in the Stephen Harper government that led the way on this diversification. In 2006, when Conservatives took office, we had barely any engagements in terms of free trade outside of North America. After Stephen Harper’s tenure in office, we had signed free trade agreements with nations representing over two-thirds of the world’s GDP, with Asia-Pacific, as well as the European free trade area, the European Union and various individual countries. We made significant progress. The problem was that the Liberal government that followed did not follow those trade agreements with the kinds of infrastructure development and development of opportunities that would have allowed us to seize those opportunities. We needed to build up the infrastructure capacity to really realize the potential of those trade agreements, but it is not correct at all that this idea of diversifying our trading arrangements is something new. It is an old idea championed by Conservatives and left on the shelf by Liberals for 11 years.”
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Mr. Speaker, not only do I support diversifying our trade, but I worked as a staffer in the Stephen Harper government that led the way on this diversification. In 2006, when Conservatives took office, we had barely any engagements in terms of free trade outside of North America. After Stephen Harper’s tenure in office, we had signed free trade agreements with nations representing over two-thirds of the world’s GDP, with Asia-Pacific, as well as the European free trade area, the European Union and various individual countries. We made significant progress. The problem was that the Liberal government that followed did not follow those trade agreements with the kinds of infrastructure development and development of opportunities that would have allowed us to seize those opportunities. We needed to build up the infrastructure capacity to really realize the potential of those trade agreements, but it is not correct at all that this idea of diversifying our trading arrangements is something new. It is an old idea championed by Conservatives and left on the shelf by Liberals for 11 years.