Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate your reading into the record the position of the Liberal Party of Canada, which is that this revised NAFO convention not be ratified. That is our position.
We take some comfort at this point in time, given the fact that the government—at least the Conservative members of this committee—is not prepared to pronounce itself on this particular convention. Clearly, it has concerns; it wants more time to study it. That means it's not necessarily sold on the benefits of the convention, so we certainly applaud that.
The Liberal Party of Canada has determined that this convention is not in the best interest of Canada. We've heard expert witness testimony during March, May, and October 2009. Now we've heard from the minister herself, which quite frankly increased my concern; it did not decrease it at all.
The Liberal Party of Canada will not be supporting this particular amendment to the motion for many reasons, but mostly because we're very clear that this is not in the best interest of Canada. We appreciate the fact that the government—at least the Conservative members here—is quite uncertain. It wants more time to study it.
But I will point this out to committee members. We made a commitment to get on to the business of other issues facing this committee. Issues were piling up. I think we've heard enough testimony for us to at least pronounce ourselves on this. I know where our party stands. I would have thought or hoped that the New Democratic Party would pronounce itself on this. If what some members are saying is that they need more time to study, that they haven't yet made up their minds on this, I guess they'll just have to make that case known not only to the committee but to the public as well.