Mr. Speaker, no apology is necessary. The mistake was at our end but nevertheless it is a pleasure to rise to address Bill C-86.
Talking specifically to the bill, this is an act to amend the Canadian Dairy Commission Act. The purpose of the bill is to amend the act to provide for the replacement of the existing system of levies with a system of pooling market returns from different classes of milk. The idea of this bill is to bring that levy system into alignment with Canada's international trade agreements.
I am the first one to admit that I do not know a tremendous amount about milk production. I am certainly a milk consumer. I go to the 7-Eleven and buy milk. I put it on my cereal and am happy to drink it, but I have only milked a cow once in my life. Apparently it is all in the wrists, but I had very little luck with that.
I will speak a little on the idea of trade. I will also talk a little from my perspective as somebody who comes from a rural constituency about the obvious need to be sensitive to the farm community and the agricultural community while at the same time recognizing the realities out there.
Certainly the reality today in this country and around the world is that we are moving more and more toward free trade. My hon. friend from Québec-Est has just spoken at length about how Quebec is a sovereign country, and if it should ever become a sovereign country, heaven forbid, how it would somehow turn the tide against free trade or be a hold out to free trade. It would protect itself from free trade as though free trade were like a cafeteria where you could pick and choose the agreements you wanted to make.
Of course, that is unrealistic. It took around 100 countries to get a GATT agreement. I remind my hon. friend from Québec-Est and my friends in the Bloc that coming up in the year 2000, which is not very far away now, we are going to see another round of negotiations where undoubtedly tariffs will continue to fall. More and more pressure will be put on Canada and countries like ours that have supply management systems. We are eventually going to have to open up.
I also point out to my hon. friend that under the NAFTA agreement and certainly under any new NAFTA agreements that would come as a result of allowing countries like Chile and other Latin American countries in, we are going to have to see things open up.
Although I am somewhat sympathetic and I have heard from my friends about how supply management has served Quebec well in the past, particularly individual farmers, I can completely understand how important agriculture is to a province and to a country. It does not only produce agricultural commodities but it also produces a lifestyle. It produces income and people with fine character. That is very important and I believe in that.
We are doing people a disservice if we are not straight with them, if we do not tell them what the reality is. The reality is free trade is coming our way and the best thing we can do now is to begin to make adjustments so that we can survive in that free trade environment.
Yesterday I watched on television as members of the Bloc and members of the government debated back and forth about whether or not Quebec was going to stay in Canada, what it would be like if it was outside of Canada and so on.
People must remember that there is a third option. We do not have to settle for status quo federalism, which not only the people in Quebec are upset about, but also the people in the west. The people in my constituency of Medicine Hat are very upset with it.
We do not have to settle for sovereignty. In fact, I understand my Bloc friends are moving away from sovereignty. Pretty soon, who knows, maybe they will be committed federalists the way they are moving around here.