Mr. Speaker, the reason I was raising my eyes is that he somehow gave the impression to the House that the Reform Party had a history rich enough to talk about the free trade agreement and NAFTA. Not only does it not have a history, it does not have a future.
In terms of parliamentary engagement, he may not like the answer but I gave it to him. He can get up and ask another question. What I was trying to say is that we are not afraid of an engagement of Parliament. It was not his party or his critic or anybody else who pressured the government into putting this issue before the parliamentary committee. It was an initiative voluntarily taken by the Government of Canada.
The reason we wanted a report by the end of December 1997 was that if there was to be a signature by the end of April we wanted the parliamentary committee to be able to offer its advise to the government in January so that when crunch time came on the negotiations we would have the advice of the Parliament of Canada. The hon. critic for the Reform Party knows this. I told him so and he agreed with it at the time. We did it at the front end and we are certainly going to consider what role, if any, Parliament can play at the back end of the process.