Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the hon. member for Québec-Est will straighten his colleague out when he gets a chance to talk to him a bit and explain a few facts.
The hon. member for Québec-Est surely knows that the United States of America did not challenge a single tariff established by Canada.
It had until April 15 to do so. I have the list in front of me, page after page of tariffs.
Therefore, this is the final list for agricultural tariffs and not one was challenged by the United States. Did the hon. member opposite know that? According to the comments he made previously, I would say he did not.
Second, the hon. member talked about durum wheat. Does he know that Canada won four times over that issue? If you will allow an expression used in hockey, and we talked about hockey last evening in this House, it is four to nothing. We have won four to nothing.
The United States took us to the GATT and we have won four times to date. If we were successful four times in a row, one need not be a lawyer from Baie-Comeau to understand that we will win a fifth time. The Canadian government is protecting Canadian farmers, it is doing all it can for them. Therefore, to describe the situation in such a way and to refer to sovereignty as a means to end the debate is something else. Members opposite may mix sovereignty with ice cream or with wheat, or even the three together when it suits them, but the truth is a bit different.
We are talking about the loss of article XI of the GATT. I have before me an article published in a francophone paper of my riding and I call upon the hon. member to give an answer to all this.
If what he is saying is true, how does he explain, for instance, that according to some agricultural journals, and I will quote only the title since time is running out: "Despite the loss of article XI of the Gatt, Canadian supply management programs are safe"? I could read one quote after another from agricultural journals stating that our quotas are safe. How does he explain that quotas are protected in the opinion of the agricultural community but not in the opinion of the Bloc Quebecois? Could it be that the Bloc members do not support quotas?