Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has to stop being “chumps” when dealing with the United States and do more to stand up for Canada’s interests, says NDP leadership candidate Thomas Mulcair.

Mulcair would also halt Canada’s purchase of F-35 jets without guarantees of contracts for Canadian companies and spend money on services for Canada’s veterans and equipment for its armed forces rather than on changing the name of Canada’s navy and air force.

Mulcair, a former Quebec environment minister, said Canada doesn’t need new environmental laws. It has to do a better job of enforcing the legislation its already got – especially when it comes to the oil sands.

Speaking with iPolitics in an exclusive and wide-ranging interview as he prepared to announce plans to seek the leadership of the NDP, Mulcair said Canada must assert a strong, independent foreign policy and use its credibility around the world to work for peace.

That’s not what the Conservative government is doing, he said.

“Canada has to be able to be able to continue to stand up for its role in the world and in its negotiations with the Americans – whether on softwood lumber where it was a complete and utter sellout by the Conservatives and the Bloc – or whether it is on the current negotiations on perimeter security,” he explained.

“We’ve just got to stop being such chumps when it comes to dealing with the Americans. We have to understand that it is in their best interest and in ours to keep things moving.”

Although the party he seeks to lead has vigorously opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement in the past and former NDP Leader Jack Layton called for it to be re-opened, Mulcair says he supports NAFTA and helped draft some of its provisions on professional services.

“To some people, the NAFTA is an anathema,” he said. “The NAFTA is the first international agreement that had provisions dealing with the environment. You can’t throw out the baby with the bath water.”

What he would like to change, however, is the way the Conservatives are allowing the U.S. to try to use the trade agreement.

“When you look at how Chapter 11 has been enforced, when you are told that a company has a right under the NAFTA to continue to export a substance that our government has considered deleterious, a substance that was an additive in gasoline. When you look at the fact that the Americans are now fighting back on a ban that I helped enforce in Quebec on 2-4-D, which is a pesticide, telling us that we have no right to ban 2-4-D, then I say we have to stand up and fight back and just tell the Americans that they are not going to determine for us that we have to add certain poisons to our environment and that’s not what the NAFTA is all about.”

On the Middle East, Mulcair would like Canada to play a constructive role in creating safe, negotiated borders for Israel and Palestine. However, the way the Harper government has handled foreign relations and its failure to win a seat on the UN Security Council has made it more difficult for Canada to play that role, he said.

“The Canada that was always an honest broker, that always fought so hard for our place in the world is no longer there.”

On Afghanistan, Mulcair endorses the position that Layton adopted in 2006, that all sides, including the Taliban, have to sit down together and work for peace.

“Jack Layton was being mocked as Taliban Jack because he said we had to sit down with all sides and start working toward peace in Afghanistan. Now it has become common place.”

When it comes to the Conservative government’s controversial plan to buy F-35 jets, Mulcair says the purchase should go to a competitive bid and there have to be guarantees of economic spinoffs for Canadian companies.

“Right now, we know that if they were to proceed the way they are proposing to do it, Canadians would be on the hook for billions and billions of dollars with not a single dollar in industrial spinoffs guaranteed by contract. That’s the type of thing that I would never allow.”

“This is about creation of jobs. If we’re spending Canadian taxpayers money to procure and secure new aircraft for our military, we’re going to get a lot of the spinoff here. We have a huge aerospace industry in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba and other places – B.C. even has some – but it would be absurd for us to continue with this process the way we’re doing it now.

The Conservatives got “taken to the cleaners” on the purchase of new heavy-lift aircraft from Boeing, he added.

Mulcair also believes Canada should be spending money on its veterans and equipment for the armed forces rather than to change the names of the navy and airforce to the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force.

“Instead of spending a fortune to repaint and redo every single bit of lettering and every letterhead and everything on every door and every ship to go back to military ensigna that hark back to the British royalty, maybe we would have been smarter to use that money to give better equipment and support to our military.”

“Not only while they are being trained and when they are in the field but after. There is an abysmal lack of resources for veterans. The point has often been made that we have lots of veterans using food banks, but we also lots of veterans who need care and who need medical and other help because of the often tragic results of post-traumatic stress.”

Mulcair would also like to see the government do things differently when it comes to the environment and projects like Alberta’s oil sands. “It’s not true in environment that the No. 1 thing we’re lacking is legislation. What we’re lacking federally right now is the determination and the will to enforce legislation.”

“The oil sands is a perfect example. The federal government has a strong role to play. The federal government doesn’t issue the permits for the exploitation of the oil sands. But the federal government does have a key role to play with regards to first nations and the cumulative effects on their health. The federal government has a key role to play with regard to both navigable and floatable waters and underground water that transits between provinces. The federal government has a role with regards to the analysis of any project for pipelines and for exports.”

The cost of the eventual cleanup of the oil sands is being passed on to future generations, said Mulcair.

“No one who is conscious of the size and scope of the oil sands in our economic life in Canada would ever call for an end to their exploitation. But anyone who has ever looked at the way they are being exploited realizes that the cumulative effect on the air, the soil and the water is something that the federal government has been ignoring and that cleanup is being left to future generations.”

However, Environment Minister Peter Kent is doing nothing to address the problem, Mulcair complained.

“We have an environment minister who simply reads whatever is put in front of him without seemingly understanding any of it. He’s always out there, as our diplomats are now, shilling – it’s shameful, but they are out there simply trying to defend the indefensible.”

“A lot of our diplomats have become apologists for discredited environmental policies of the Conservatives.”

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