Mr. Speaker, I can only go by the actual motion that is before the House today. The NDP opposition motion in paragraph 2 calls for the government not to negotiate any further liberalization of trade or investment at the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization. It could not be any clearer than that.
It seems to me that the NDP's approach is a little bit like the Liberal approach, that we can have our cake and eat too. It simply is not the case.
I gather the NDP member would want us to go there on a very narrow agenda and negotiate on certain sections of agriculture, although that is not how it reads in the supply day motion. After what the member said, I do not think that is a very practical solution.
We know that other countries, like the trading blocs of Europe, have a vested interest in keeping their subsidies and tariffs in place. If they were to come to those negotiations and they were only on agriculture, although I recognize that this is an approach that we could take, it would not be very helpful. We are all politicians. We know that it would be very tough for the European Union politicians to go home and say, “We negotiated on agriculture, but we are sorry, we lost”. They have to have more on the table than just agriculture to satisfy their public.
Some $70 billion in subsidies went into farmers' pockets in Europe last year, subsidies that are destroying our Canadian farmers. Basically the whole European Union trade bloc is off limits to our exports. Even worse than that, they overproduce as a result of these large subsidies. They dump that 10% or 15% overproduction on the world markets and it kills our agricultural prices.
We have a difference in points of view on how that can be achieved. I suggest it is through a larger trade round than the member suggested.