Mr. Speaker, about 72,000 Canadians are registered fur trappers, about half of them being native or Metis. Another 30,000 work on trimming, storing and creating garments with fur and selling them.
As a former trapper myself, I would like the Minister of International Trade to explain now that native trappers have convinced the European Union to postpone for one year its ban on furs caught with leghold traps, how will the government use that one year reprieve to ensure that an EU ban on Canadian wild furs never takes place?