Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the comments of the parliamentary secretary for health and his recognition that indeed the Liberal Party has finally decided that free trade is an attribute and one that has been very successful in transforming the Canadian economy into one of growth.
As my colleague from Calgary centre has just stated, the domestic economy has not recovered. There still is not the confidence there with consumers but on the trade side, on the export side we have been very aggressive. We have done a good job and there has been tremendous growth.
I know the Liberal Party has done a major conversion here and now they think that free trade is good. Canada generally has been a leader in trying to put together the trade deals that are necessary. As I said earlier, we can compete with anybody on a level playing field but we cannot compete with subsidies from other countries and high tariffs.
At the last round of the GATT talks which the Liberals took over at the very end, they favoured supply management, article XI, which would preserve border closures and stop any product from coming into the country in terms of supply managed farm products. Canada became isolated at those trade talks. We were the only country that finally took that view and continued to take that view although it was not one that was conducive to free trade and it still is not.
We have moved to tariffs now, 350 per cent tariff on butter. Surely for a country that espouses free trade, trade liberalization, and has since after the second world war, are we not in a real contradiction here that we want free trade in other countries, we want access to their markets, but we will not provide it for the supply managed farm industry here at home?
I would like the parliamentary secretary to comment on that question.