Mr. Speaker, I was at the summit. Clearly, if the member would look back at the press conference and the stories, a couple of very important themes came out of the summit.
One is market diversification. I think the hon. member will agree there was a very strong consensus at that meeting that we need to develop new markets. We need market diversification. This is something the industry has applauded. In fact people in the industry said they had been working on this and it is extremely important for them. It will leverage new money because the $35 million we have put in will be matched by the industry. We are looking at anywhere between $70 million to $100 million over the next five years that could be put in. That was something extremely important. There was a very strong consensus on that.
The other point that was agreed to at the summit was we need to put more money into research and development. That is what we have done. In addition there was very strong support for advocacy programs. We have done that.
Are there other things we need to do? Absolutely. We need to go beyond what we have done. We need to look at long term measures to make sure we are competitive. We need to look for new markets. We need to look at other programs to help the industry, the community and those people who will find difficulty.
The government is looking at those options. We certainly want to take in any views the opposition members have on specific proposals they think the government should carry out. I would like to hear those specific proposals. I have not heard them. They have said we need to help, but they should give us specific proposals. What can we do for communities? What can we do for individuals? What about the industry? Give us some specific proposals. We are looking at it. We are reviewing it. We are very much engaged in this and we want to respond to Canadians who will be hurt by the protectionism of the Americans. The opposition talks about the Americans all the time and how they believe in free trade. The Americans talk about free trade but their actions show otherwise.