Mr. Speaker, my first comments are for the parliamentary secretary. He states that the government informed the population by means of the Canada Gazette and the Internet. I doubt that people will get up in the morning and start surfing the Net to check out the Revenue Canada or Finance Canada site and look in a Department of Finance subfile to see if it contains a bill that might eventually be of interest to them.
I would also like to point out that parliamentarians—because we are here among parliamentarians—only had two weeks to review and assess Bill C-11, whose schedules alone total 3,000 pages. In fact, we had but two sessions at the industry committee, which should have been held at the finance committee.
When we speak of consultations, perhaps we should use the same definition, and when we speak about bogus consultations, we could perhaps ask the Liberals to give us a definition, because they are very good at that.
I now have a comment and a question for the NDP spokesperson who spoke earlier. I noticed that the New Democratic Party does not support Bill C-11. They were against previous free trade agreements, but the purpose of Bill C-11 is to simplify trade and exports for companies in Quebec and Canada, including those in his riding. So I have difficulty seeing how they can explain to their constituents that they are opposed to streamlining trade. We are not talking about the free trade agreement that was concluded three, four or five years ago. That was my first comment.
Here is my question. My hon. colleague may also have attended the industry committee sittings. I would like to know what he thinks personally of the role of parliamentarians in the review of this particular bill, when we had two weeks and two weeks only to study a bill whose schedules alone total 3,000 pages.
Before closing, I would like to make a brief comment and to ask the hon. member a short question on Canada's obligation to respect its international conventions. Whether we like it or not, Canada signed a free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico. Following the Liberals' conversion, Canada also signed a free trade agreement with Israel and another with Chile, and Canada is an active member of the WTO. Does he not believe it is essential that Canada respect the international conventions it has signed?