I really thought I had made a motion to discuss my motion, and I will do so in a few moments. But I am opposed to Mr. Lemieux's motion. It is quite ironic to hear someone make a motion for there to be no more motions; any time we are dealing with opposition motions, people from the Conservative Party do everything they can to delay them. They say that they are no good, that they are out of order, they speak for inordinate lengths of time in order to stop them coming to a vote.
Basically, the Conservatives see democracy as a problem. In this committee, up to now, each time motions have been presented, we have not agreed, but we have moved to a vote. We did that with Mr. Lemieux's motion on the same issue, the SRM. I had my say. In my opinion, the motion was too weak, but I still agreed with what it was proposing. We had a vote, and there was no undue discussion about it. We have just passed one that Mr. Valeriote introduced. Everyone seemed quite happy to begin this meeting of the committee with that motion; we all agreed.
But the moment the Conservatives do not agree, like here, for example, we hear them say that the opposition is creating problems and that the opposition is trying to hold up our good old report on competitiveness. I repeat, Mr. Chair, last week, I was at the UPA congress. Not a soul talked to me about the report on competitiveness. But a lot of people talked to me about SRM, and about AgriFlexibility and about the agreement with the European Union, given that supply management is still on the table. I had a lot of discussions about matters like that.
We have to think about the present and respond to the requests from our producers when they are faced with an emergency, as they are with SRMs. That is all I am trying to do by introducing my motion. I am not trying to play games. The motion is the direct result of a request from Quebec producers. I feel sure that Canadian producers are making the same request because we heard testimony on this very subject that said the same thing: they are looking for a program to compensate for the competitiveness gap between Canada and the United States caused by our SRM standards.
So I do not see what is so terrible about the opposition that makes people on the government side incapable of holding a vote and moving on. We have to finish by discussing the report. So I am opposed to Mr. Lemieux's motion.