Madam Speaker, I found it interesting that the minister talked about Canada's obligation on trade issues.
When he was in Yorkton last month he opened up his speech with an anecdote about how his first assignment as minister was to travel to the WTO negotiations taking place in Europe. The gist of his story was that he had only been minister for three days and he had been asked to read the entire file on the seven hour flight. He did not get too many laughs because he did not know that the speaker a few time slots before him had outlined how Canada had failed to adequately negotiate these international agreements and how Canada had basically traded away the farm, so to speak. I wanted to mention that point.
I have a few specific questions for the minister.
According to the 2003 statistics for CAIS, of the 34,432 applications received, payments had been made on only some 13,000 and change. Those numbers were provided by the parliamentary secretary on his tour throughout Saskatchewan. Does the minister view that as a success? One in three applications has received payment. Those are the government's own numbers. Does he view that as a success?
We are talking about a very specific matter today. The minister's speech decried the rhetoric from the opposition side and he not once addressed the motion.
Will the government commit to actually dropping the cash on deposit requirements? He said it is a matter of federal-provincial agreements. Will he start those negotiations? Will he visit the premiers, secure the certainty that they will drop them? Will he start that today?