by Angelo Persichilli
THE HILL TIMES
John Tory hasn’t put his hat in the ring for the leadership of the Tory party just yet, but should the president of Rogers cable enter the fray chances are better than good he will run on a platform of freer trade and keeping Canada’s borders open to international competition and immigrants.

In an interview with The Hill Times, the savvy political organizer, whose been involved in countless election campaigns at the municipal, provincial and federal level, staked out where he stands on several issues and even took time to praise the Liberal government’s record on fostering open markets and borders in the face of the threats posed by the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks.

"After having achieved what we have achieved through the free trade agreement, we cannot let out legitimate concerns about security issues to start to close the borders again," he said. "It is critical to the success of Canada and United States that we should keep the border as opened as we can. We have fought long and hard to keep the border opened for commercial purposes."

Mr. Tory stressed that today’s security concerns are legitimate and real but should not lessens’ the government’s resolve to continue expanding free trade. In order to avoid losing ground, "which would be a significant problem
for the country," Mr. Tory said we must "find ways in which we can protect our own borders against what is the really common enemy, meaning terrorists and other subversive forces.

"Assuming that most of these people are coming from outside from both our countries," Mr. Tory believes that "as supposed to close down our own border, between Canada and Unites States, if we have done a good job restricting entry of un-desirable or subversive people from other countries into Canada or the United States, then wouldn’t be much need to worry about who passes back and forth."

Mr. Tory noted that there are countries in the world, whose relations aren’t as good as those enjoyed by Canada and the U.S., that have still managed to open up their shared borders to a greater extent than in North America. Mr. Tory stressed that Sept. 11 events should not be used as an excuse to become more isolationists. "In fact, we should go further for two reasons" he said.

The first is to encourage private citizens to "pass now more or less freely back and forth across the U.S. border." The second relates to business and commerce: "We should be looking further then the free trade agreement went, with the exception of the cultural industries where we have to maintain some rules and regulations."

Many industries will have, argued Mr. Tory, more opportunities by reducing the barriers between Canada and the United States. Specifically, he mentioned the wine industry. "If we look at the original free trade agreement in 1987-88 there were people that quite genuinely believed that Ontario and Canadian wine industries would disappear. Instead, what we have today is a Canadian wine industry that is stronger then ever, that is making more impact in United States market then every one would have had possible imagined.

Who would have said five years ago that we would have the huge presence in aerospace we have today?" Mr. Tory also express his "admiration" for Brian Tobin who "praised openly Brian Mulroney for the free trade agreement." Mr. Tory said that he never thought he would "see the day when anybody from the Liberal Party would ever indicate that the free trade would be anything but a terrible evil by the then Conservative government of Brian Mulroney; I would have said no chance."

But shortly after, "Mr. Chrétien and others started making speeches saying that they were looking for new opportunities to expand free trade," he said, adding that he’s now return to return the favour by praising the Liberals looking for future opportunities to expand free trade with United States or other countries
"They are on the right track," he said.

An important element for the future of this country is immigration. Mr. Tory continued. "People have to understand that we need immigrants, but also they have to know that those who abuse their trust will be asked to leave." In this sector, Mr. Tory believes that the government should move in three directions. The first is to continue with a significant level of immigration. "Unless more people start to have a lot of more babies, which I don’t know of any sign of them doing it, we need to have more people coming from other countries with particular skills in order to keep the economy growing."

This is important because "if we reduce the level of immigration we are going to see that it is very difficult to continue to grow our economy." The second point is the need to make sure that the skilled people we have identified will find the proper job once in Canada: "Now we have the ridiculous situation where architects and engineers driving taxies when we have a shortage of those people in the country," said Mr. Tory.

The third element is to "get tougher on those who abuse the privilege of coming here." This third point is important because "they undermine the confidence in immigration and create the false impression that exist around the country about immigration." So far, Mr. Tory won’t say if he intends to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party. However, there is a growing number of people urging him on as he is seen as part of a new generation of conservatives with a big experience coming from his past involvement in provincial and federal politics.