Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the insight of the hon. member in posing the question, so closely on track with our position on so much that it does of course beg the question about how we can work together even more closely in our two parties.
It is a dimension of the problem that the federal Liberals do not like to address, but in fact, as we find with international relations, with foreign relations and even in relations with our friends to the south of us, these types of relations are just relations between people. The leader of the Progressive Conservatives is quite right when he points to the fact that one can make a solution more difficult to arrive at when all the way along one insults everybody who is involved in the possible resolution of that particular problem. This federal Liberal Party takes on anti-Americanism as a policy. That is a policy position for the Liberals. Not only is it a knee-jerk reflex, it is a policy position.
I much would have much preferred to see the Prime Minister going to bat for Canada on issues like the U.S. farm policy and its subsidies, which hurt all Canadian farmers, and on softwood lumber and certainly on this beef issue. I wish his focus and his energies had been there instead of on the mindless insults across the border that he not only perpetrates but allows his ministers to perpetrate, without any kind of recourse, without any kind of correction. That has poisoned the well of negotiations. The member is quite right in pointing that out.