Mr. Speaker, is it not interesting? We finally flushed out the Minister for International Trade. He had 20 minutes here today and he dealt with some of the concerns people are raising. I think that is great. It is about time.
Instead of using his time to bash the opposition parties, he should have used his time to explain this deal to the fullest possible detail.
It is almost annoying that the minister would suggest the Reform motion—I guess he did not read it—says that we do not understand this. The motion says that we are condemning the government for failing to explain why it is negotiating the MAI, why it is failing to explain the benefits and costs to the Canadian people, and why it is failing to take part in public discussion on the agreement.
The minister and the parliamentary secretary will know that the amount of mail on this is increasing dramatically. All members are getting a lot of mail on it. It is because the minister and his department have failed to go out and sell the deal across the country.
He says in his response that they took it to committee and asked the committee to study it. Absolutely. It was three weeks in committee. We were told that we needed a report by December 13 when the House rose. I guess we did because the thing was moving along. There was a deadline where we were going to have an April 30 signing if everything went ahead. We understand this may be delayed, but that is the timeframe we were working toward.
When was the minister to involve the public? It is the end of February. The deal is supposed to be signed on April 30. Things move along pretty slowly in this process. The minister said we had a lot of people make representations, a lot of organizations, 40 some, including chambers of commerce. In spite of that the committee said the government should continue and increase its efforts to inform Canadians of the merits of negotiating the MAI.
Why would the committee say that? A lot of people came to committee and said that, first, the committee should have travelled across the country and addressed the concerns where people live and that, second, a lot of people did not even know what MAI meant. What does it mean? There has to be an education process. We have a minister and a department that are not taking the time.
The committee made 20 some recommendations in the middle of December. We still have not had a response to the recommendations.
I have a couple of questions for the minister. When will they respond to the committee's report? Will they wait until the day the MAI is signed? Will the minister bring the deal back to the House of Commons for debate so that we have a chance to consult with our constituents once they arrive at an agreement, a chance to debate it in the House of Commons and a chance for a vote by all members?