Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on what the member had to say.
It is interesting to preface the remarks that the NDP members really are free traders at heart, but they just cannot support this free trade agreement. Of course they could not support the Canada-Israel free trade agreement. They voted against the Canada-Costa Rica free trade agreement. They promised to vote against the Colombian free trade agreement, the Peru free trade agreement, and any other free trade agreement that would come before this House, but other than that, they are fully in favour of free trade. That is very interesting.
When it comes to supply management, I was in Geneva, I was in Davos representing supply management and agriculture during those discussions. We are the government that brought in compositional standards for the dairy industry. On behalf of my government, I received the first and only standing ovation ever given to a minister, because we actually moved ahead on all that. We actually believed in all that. We actually supported all that. That is why we made sure in this agreement that supply managed industries are protected. They are protected. The member should read the agreement.
There are a couple of other things. One is that when it comes to a domestic shipbuilding industry, the hon. minister has already made mention of how the work that is lined up in the shipbuilding industry in Canada is not only for this year but it stretches out for the next 10 years. There is a lot of good work with lots of well-paying jobs all across the country, wherever there are shipbuilding facilities. That is good news. That is because of the actions this government has taken on a procurement basis to make sure that that happened. There may have been empty work yards a year ago, but it is not happening now. It is not only good news now, but it stretches off into the future.
Regarding the NDP's solution to shipbuilding, members could go to B.C. and see that just offshore there is $450 million tied up in an NDP fiasco called the fast ferries. Anytime we want to witness how the NDP shipbuilding strategy works, there are empty vessels parked on shore at taxpayers' expense that have never turned a wheel. That is the trouble with economic illiteracy and it is abounding in the NDP in this debate today.