Mr. Speaker, the member for Hamilton Mountain and I are in full agreement on his definition of the Liberals' handling of this. He used the term “mess”. I agree wholeheartedly. We in the Conservative caucus want to stand up for the members of that union, and not just workers in and around Hamilton, but also others.
I am not sure if the member is on the trade committee, but he might know that a year ago Conservatives asked the minister about safeguards. We knew that it was critical to have this debate to find out how we could apply safeguards but mitigate against some of the real impacts on fabricators, on critical infrastructure projects and on western Canada in particular. The member would know, because the union members in his riding are akin to some of the pipeline workers and union members in western Canada, that those industries are suffering. We do not need to pile yet another economic challenge on top of that.
Our modest proposals to the government should be a way of constructively addressing some of the impacts of this big, quick trade action. As I have said, the government knows that it violates the WTO rules. It formed a little Ottawa group to modernize the WTO, and it has lost a lot of credibility on this issue.
Let us try to blunt some of the negative impacts of this legislation. Conservatives have been wanting to have the debate on safeguards for over a year. Let us get it right. I hope the NDP and the Conservatives can both push the Liberals to finally do the right thing.