Mr. Chair, I have had the opportunity to work on agricultural issues for the last four years in the House of Commons and it has been a great privilege. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and I have debated the issues a number of times.
I want to mention tonight that in the last couple of BSE debates that we had with him he seemed to say, and fairly stridently, that we needed to play hardball with the Americans. He was speaking out strongly against them. The World Series is coming up and I was reminded of that comment tonight. On several occasions he talked about how we needed to deal with the Americans and make sure that we dealt harshly with them.
I do not know if he knew it at the time, but over the last year or so that has involved several different facets. As our leader mentioned earlier tonight, they are things such as slagging the American president on an in-flight news conference about his domestic policy, and calling Americans different names in various places and on different occasions. But probably the greatest failure of the government is that it has left the American Congress uninformed about the issue, so that when we do go down to Washington we are told by them that they actually thought that the border was open.
I am reminded of another comment and that is one which is used by Dr. Phil when he says, “How is that working for you?”
I would like the member to comment on the total failure of the course suggested by the parliamentary secretary and the resulting consequences it has had for Canadian agriculture.