Madam Chair, obviously as I sit right behind my hon. colleague from Peace River, I could not help but pay rapt attention to his remarks this evening concerning this crisis in our beef industry. As he so eloquently put it, and as did others from both sides of the House, this extends well beyond just beef producers, although they might be the ones hardest hit.
One of the things I have heard in my constituency in the past eight and a half months since May 20 when this crisis befell Canada, and I extend that all across the country, is that Parliament has been in recess for nearly six months of that eight and a half months. The government took the usual summer recess for three months, from the middle of June to the middle of September. Then because of that party's leadership issue and wanting to install a new prime minister the Liberals took another almost three month recess and we just started sitting again.
As my colleague from Yellowhead remarked a few minutes ago, we are not even having an emergency debate. After all that time, the government does not believe that this is an emergency. It is an emergency in Prince George—Peace River. I am sure it is an emergency in my colleague's riding adjacent to mine in Peace River, Alberta. I believe it is an emergency all across Canada. Yet we have a government that seems to have a problem with addressing it as an emergency.
My colleague, in his capacity as the international trade critic, has had a lot of experience in this over the past 10 years that he and I have sat together in the House of Commons. I wonder if he would address in the time remaining some of the specific things he believes the government should be doing to move this issue forward, rather than putting forward some pretty lame excuses that we saw from the Minister of Agriculture earlier in the debate today. After eight and a half months it was very depressing to hear those remarks.