Mr. Speaker, I do not know where to start. That was one single argument, repeated 1,500 times. I guess repetition does not necessarily make an argument any better, but we will leave that for another day.
I want to comment a bit on some of the comments made by the member for Fraser Valley. He was touting a magazine and quoting from it, telling us that he liked to read Canadian stories in Canadian magazines. We all agree. He then made a statement to the effect that he does not need advertising. We all know that, but that is the point of the bill.
For him to be able to read those Canadian magazines and read those Canadian stories, those magazines need advertising dollars. That is the point of this legislation. I think he might be starting to understand.
One of the longstanding policies of the Government of Canada has been to help the magazine industry in securing enough advertising dollars by not helping split runs. If we allow foreign magazines without any Canadian content, without any expenses on that side, to come and skim advertising dollars and services, then we will indeed cripple our Canadian magazine industry.
It is rather heartening to see that one of the members of the Reform Party understands that somebody might need advertising dollars in order to put out these magazines. That is the purpose of the bill. We hope to get it through second reading and to committee and, with the help of the opposition parties, we will move on.
I have listened to all of the speeches from Reform members and there is a theme coming out. I thought initially it might have been sheepishness on their part in that they were raising these bogeymen. They say that we are poking our American neighbours in the eye and they are going to retaliate. They say that we should not aggravate them because they will then come around and kill our wheat industry, the hog industry and softwood lumber. They threw in hockey and a lot of other things.
Maybe I was not accurate about them being sheepish, because the more I listened the more things came out, such as “We should listen more to the American trade secretary saying this and that. We will not win. We will go to the WTO and they will quash it”. It seems that members of the Reform Party are not here to defend Canadian interests. They seem to be here to defend American interests. They seem to be defending anything that is foreign, but not Canadian.
We want to help an industry that has grown over the past 30 years, an industry which consists of 1,000 small businesses and employs over 6,000 Canadians.
Reform members are giving me the impression that they may not be sheepish, but they seem to be Americans in sheep's clothing.