Mr. Speaker, I hope Hansard caught the comment from the minister. It was not very respectful I would say.
I hope that this issue can come to an appropriate resolution in negotiations, but I am not convinced it will happen. It would have helped quite a bit if the Prime Minister and our ambassador at the time who happened to be the Prime Minister's nephew had shown better judgment during the U.S. elections when they suggested they supported Al Gore and wanted him to be president of the United States. I suspect they burned some bridges in terms of goodwill and that has not helped the matter any.
There are some opportunities. We may even want to go to an expanded free trade agreement with the United States. The government had the opportunity for a five year review of NAFTA. The government did not choose to expand NAFTA. We have the opportunity to tell the United States that we need a third round of negotiations and expand this further with more integration and perhaps it could give up on trade law which is hurting our industry so much.