Mr. Speaker, I note with much interest that it is the parliamentary secretary for health who is speaking on trade issues. That is quite an interesting response from the Liberals on this very important subject.
What brings this to our attention, and the Bloc motion recognizes this, is what is happening in the domestic industry. It seems to me that the Liberal government is rushing all the time to sign these trade deals, deals that seem to be desired by the government to put its signature on trade deals without doing a deeper analysis of how they will impact the domestic market.
There is no denying the fact that as a trading nation we need to sign trade deals to protect ourselves. There is no question that with 31 million people our prosperity lies in international trade and that will have an impact on domestic markets.
However, if we look at the crises that are now taking place in the beef industry with BSE, in the softwood industry, and now in the textile industry with the closure of six plants in Quebec, we all knew that this would happen. We all knew a long time ago in the WTO negotiations that we were moving in this direction. I was at the WTO meetings in Seattle and Doha.
What I fail to understand is why the government takes stopgap measures. It makes these announcements about stopgap measures to help our local Canadians who are impacted by these trade deals. Even now, the record of this government in assisting domestic Canadians in relation to these trade agreements is not something to be proud of. Someone asked the parliamentary secretary, what is the point? Why do you want to rush into signing trade agreements when you do not really do a thorough analysis of what is happening in the domestic industry?