Federal trade minister Ed Fast used his first major speech to a business audience today to promote the government’s trade agenda and to trash its critics.
The official opposition New Democratic Party was a particular target for the three-term MP from Abbotsford, B.C.
He used a defence of the recently signed Canada-Honduras free trade agreement as a launching pad for a scathing attack on the trade-skeptical New Democrats.
“This free trade agreement provides Hondurans with fresh hope that this new economic partnership with Canada will help lift many of them out of abject poverty,” Fast told the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto. “And that is exactly where we diverge from our NDP opponents, and I won’t mince words.”
He didn’t.
Fast said the opposition “pay lip service to wanting to support freer trade, (but) their abysmal record shows that they have opposed every single free trade agreement Canada has ever signed.”
He referred to opponents of free trade with the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement and in recent Parliaments, NDP opposition or delaying tactics when dealing with legislation to implement free trade agreements with Chile, Costa Rica, Israel, Peru, Colombia, Panama, the European Free Trade Association, Jordan and Honduras.
“While the NDP is driven by a harmful ideology that would build silos of protectionism around our industries and isolate Canada from the rest of the global community, our Conservative government believes in engagement with the rest of the world,” he said in an unusually partisan speech to a non-political audience.
Fast said deals such as a proposed Canada-European Union free trade arrangement expected within months and trade talks with India and Asian countries including China will open billions of dollars in trade and create jobs.
Trade promotion is at the core of the Conservative economic plan for the next four years of majority government and Fast was signaling that he expects fierce opposition from New Democrats in the House of Commons.
He did not mention the World Trade Organization’s faltering Doha Round negotiations as part of the trade agenda.
