Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Souris—Moose Mountain for his excellent question and his concern for the way that Canadians can actually continue to develop new industries and support existing industries here at home.
As he rightly mentioned, this bill does not deal with these particular areas of trying to develop new textiles and new raw materials and that sort of industrial support, I guess we could call it. This simply deals with our current agreements in extending those general tariffs to least developed and preferred countries.
The hon. member has raised a very important issue. I think the government should consider it. I would also encourage the government to consider that here in Canada where we do have the ability to produce raw materials, we should continue to do that. We should give industry the incentive not only to produce it here but to continue to develop it into a final product rather than either exporting our raw materials or sourcing out raw materials elsewhere.
As I mentioned in my speech, clearly the idea of helping to develop least developed countries is something that I think Canadians support. We have to be cognizant about Canadian industry to make sure that we do not put it at a disadvantage, but the idea, as my hon. colleague talked about, is to produce hemp or other forms of raw materials, if the government could produce some sort of incentive. There are ways to do that, whether it is some sort of tax incentive or other forms of incentive to create and stimulate new areas of industry and growth in this country. Of course we would encourage the government to pursue and support that.
Clearly that is a separate issue, and we hope to continue, as my colleague has done, to encourage the government to pursue those sorts of support mechanisms and at the same time, under this particular bill, the things that we are pursuing for the future. I hope that in pursuing the strategies we have, we do not put Canadian companies and Canadian industry at a disadvantage but instead help to develop new opportunities for industry here in Canada.