Mr. Speaker, I know the instinctive gut reaction of the NDP to any economic crisis is to yell for a subsidy. We are open to listening to the arguments members are putting for emergency aid.
I suggest that the long term strategy of the government should be to do what we can to reduce and eliminate those subsidies by our big competitors, particularly with respect to the United States. I suggest three things that are more practical than anything I have heard from this side of the House or that.
First, the government should use that dispute settling mechanism more actively and quickly. This crisis was seen coming. It took six weeks to activate that mechanism and it should not do that.
Second, the government should move more actively to lobby U.S. consumer interests. Our allies in this fight with the U.S. are American consumer interests gouged by the U.S. subsidization programs and protectionism as much as our farmers.
Third, get into this European-American dialogue which is going to put great pressure on reduction of European subsidies. Those are three things that can be done on a proactive side to reduce and eliminate the subsidies.