Mr. Chair, I would also like to congratulate my colleague from the NDP for his speech, which reflects our position perfectly.
I would like to tell him of a visitor who came to us a few years ago after Celanese and Cavalier Textiles closed down. We were visited by the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had come to tell the Chamber of Commerce and the manufacturers to forget about the textile and apparel industries, because of globalization, and move on to something else. According to him, we had to come up with specific measures. It was a lost cause, because he thought it was.
This is an example of this government's lack of action. Another proof of this, as I said earlier, is that when Denim Swift closed down, a strategic committee made recommendations to the then industry minister. We came out of that meeting very frustrated, because there was absolutely nothing on the table to try and save those jobs. The minister had promised to set up a committee, but what she gave us was a sham committee to make her look good. That committee was supposed to examine the textile situation a year ago, even if we all know it should have been done 10 years earlier. We never saw any report from this committee. This goes to show how this was, again, just window dressing.
I would now like to ask my colleague what he thinks of the bilateral agreements that the U.S. signed with Caribbean countries. The Government of Canada did not see fit to sign any such agreement in order to save our businesses.