Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to hear that the hon. member shares with me the responsibility that we have to enhance our environment and turn it over to our children in better condition than when we took it on. That is a commitment that as a farmer I have always had.
As to the rest of it, I have lobbied for farm issues for years. One of the problems that I had as a person representing supply management within Canada was as I lobbied for my own sector I knew I was doing it to the detriment of another part of agriculture, one of the people who worked in the same business. In other words, if I was effectively able to get a good deal for supply management it could have been to the detriment of grains and red meat and that always bothered me.
Under the new GATT agreement we are now underneath one umbrella. Now we can lobby for the farm industry as a whole. Also, the GATT agreement laid out world-wide foundations that we never had before and now have.
When I campaigned in the October election I campaigned for the retention of article XI(2)(c)(i) for supply management because at that point that was what we understood to be the only position that we had and therefore we went for it.
When we became the government we found afterwards that the position of article XI(2)(c)(i) was not attainable because there were 116 countries out of 117 voting against it. That was not our fault. What we did was go to the places, the SM-5, the supply managed groups to replace that aspect of it and said: "All right, what do we need? What do we need to protect that part of agriculture?" They told us. We negotiated it and got it. That part of supply management is protected.
However, I want to go back to the foundation as the soil is within agriculture. With the GATT signing we now have a foundation that is world-wide that we can build from. If another country like the United States challenges us on wheat we can work from a base set of rules which we never had before. I think we are miles ahead because of that.