Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just as a little sidebar here, the other day Minister Ritz, the Minister of Agriculture, along with the pork producers had a pork day on the Hill—I thought it was extremely successful—because of the concerns about the H1N1 virus. They basically wanted to say that pork was healthy, tasty, and was very good. The problem was that they ran out.
In order to promote the lobster industry within Canada.... I asked a lot of people when the last time was that they had bought a lobster, and they don't. I just throw this out as a sidebar before I get into my question on seals: have you thought of maybe buying 2,000 lobsters from the riding of Sackville--Eastern Shore in Nova Scotia, arranging for all the lobsters and bringing them up? Cut them up and we could serve them to all those people on the Hill, just to say that maybe they could consider buying lobster in the future. That may just promote something on the Hill and promote to the city of Ottawa the quality of lobsters we have and show that it's a tasty item to choose. Maybe you could promote the industry in that way. I just leave that with you.
Here is my question for my colleague on the WTO side. We weren't successful in getting the United States to lift the ban on the Marine Mammal Protection Act, even though we negotiated trade deals with them—NAFTA, free trade, and everything else. My concern is, as the trade talks go on with the EU—and maybe this is a question more for Stockwell Day, but I want to reiterate the importance of this. My feeling is that we'll go along. The major industries, such as pharmaceuticals, forestry, agriculture, etc., want this deal with the EU. We have this little hindrance on seals...“Well, if we don't win it, no big deal.” That's about how I feel, that the government may end up being resigned to the fact that we didn't win the seal argument and we're going to proceed with these trade talks anyway.
In your experience, am I fearful over nothing, or am I correct in this? When I talked to some sealers out of Labrador the other day, they were very concerned about these EU talks and afraid that they may be left out of the equation altogether; that although Canada may pound its fists and say that what the EU has done is wrong, at the end of the day we're just blowing sand.