Mr. Speaker, in my position as parliamentary secretary for international trade I want to compliment the Minister for International Trade for the shrewd bargaining and negotiating that he is doing right now with the United States. He is just back from Tokyo on our agricultural issues and so on.
When the member across the way says these things about trade and everything else, yes, that has benefited Canada, but we have been in there renegotiating these deals to put it in the right perspective. In some of the cases that the member across the way mentioned, when the Conservatives made these deals, quite frankly in some of them they were signing a blank cheque. That has not been the direction of this government.
Finally I have to ask the member across the way, if the Conservatives are so fiscally prudent how many years would it have taken them? They were the ones who were overspending by $42.5 billion a year. How long would it have taken them to get the books back in order? Quite frankly, I think they would be very hard pressed to meet the standards we have set.