Mr. Speaker, all day I have been listening to members of the Liberal Party say how wonderful free trade has been for the country, but I have not noticed the price of bread or milk, the price of clothes or the price of a vehicle go down. Prices have not gone down. They have gone up. The income of the average family has gone down. Wages have gone down. Teenagers in Yukon earn less than what I earned 20 years ago at minimum wage jobs. The minimum wage keeps people below the poverty line.
We keep hearing how good free trade is. What free trade has meant is that agribusiness can buy its wheat from Argentina cheaper than it can from Canadians, so we push our farmers right under.
With all the businesses that we are supposed to support so that they can invest in other countries, does that mean that Canadian workers will be lining up to go to work in Mexico for pennies a day? Just what are these benefits? As a person who has been at home with my family for 15 years before I came here, it was not easy to get by. I earned less money as an adult than I did as a teenager with the changes under free trade. Could the hon. member explain more clearly what are the benefits to the average family?