Mr. Speaker, on April 22 I raised with the Minister for International Trade a question concerning the recent decision by the U.S. government which affected Canadian exports of durum wheat.
What happened at that time is that the American farm lobby pressured the U.S. government, the U.S. trade representative and the President to initiate some anti-dumping regulations and penalties according to the GATT agreement.
What this has done is really create an air of uncertainty for Canadian farmers, in particular farmers I represent in the province of Saskatchewan. The problem we have with this is that the Americans in every election year seemed to initiate a number of anti-dumping and countervailing actions on our Canadian exports.
This is a very serious concern because it seems that we signed the free trade agreements in 1988 and NAFTA in 1993. We signed last week the GATT agreements to facilitate freer trade, competitive trade between nations, particularly between Canada and the U.S.
Since these agreements have been signed we tend to have all of these actions, which are extremely difficult for many of our producers, particularly the grain producers in western Canada and in other parts of the country when they have a very good market. They have a very good product and they are very competitive in terms of their product. It is not subsidized to any great extent. It is an action of fair trade.
I was not totally pleased with the response I received during question period. It was very short. What I wanted to do is give an overview of my experience in Washington last week. I met with a number of U.S. congressmen to discuss trade issues as well as with the U.S. trade representative and other people.
What I concluded from all this is that in private the U.S. congressmen understand the issue of durum wheat imports into the U.S. They understand the complexities of trade and the commonalties between the U.S. and Canada. In many ways they are aware of the very important fact that Canada is the U.S.' major trading partner and vice versa.
Privately they are very consoling and they are saying do not worry about these things, they are pretty important to the farmers they represent but it is election year.
This is the point. We have all of the Congress of 435 representatives, congressmen, running for re-election this fall. We have 34 of the hundred senators running for re-election in the U.S. this fall. It seems that every two years, which is a very gruelling schedule for elections, the U.S. has a large number of these anti-dumping and countervailing actions taken upon Canada. It is not only Canada, it always means to target other countries like Brazil and Europe and South America and some of the Pacific rim countries, but it always includes Canada because it is really politically astute for it.
My question at this time is the same except I would like a little more information from the government. Can we have this government's assurance that it is going to protect Canadian farmers' interests and not cave in to this American pre-election posturing?
What I am looking for in specific terms is what is our week by week, month by month response to this action, which I classify as an unfriendly action on our country, to the Americans and to some of the businesses that are based in America that do business with Canada?
Can the hon. member give us a precise overview on what that might be?