Mr. Speaker, the member for Calgary East is a lot more knowledgeable about international trade agreements than we would know by the tenor of his question. He would know that we do not rush into negotiations. He would know that these negotiations take years to achieve
. He would know that the deal that was signed 10 years ago at the World Trade Organization, which eliminates barriers this year and eliminates quotas, was negotiated over many years and was probably begun by a government previous to this one. He would know that a lot of those negotiations were done by governments, including the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. A lot of these had come into context. Rushing into agreements I do not think is the context; it is something that is worked at over a long period of time by the international community.
He raises a couple of interesting points. He asks why the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health would be apprised of this question. I was a member of the finance committee when we made the recommendations to the Minister of Finance. I stood in the House saying that I agreed we should do this and maybe more, maybe we should go further, and I think the Minister of Finance has gone further. We asked for two items and he gave us measures worth over $600 million.
In my riding, we had three textile industries that have had difficulty. We had Dominion Textile that closed down after over 100 years in operation. It moved to Magog and then had trouble there. We lost Britex, a small specialty manufacturer that had big trouble a few years ago. Incidentally, Dominion Textile's and Britex's first bankruptcies or foreclosures were under a previous government. I think the member should know that. He should not talk about just rushing. There was a refinancing of Britex, but unfortunately it had trouble again.
I believe the measures we are taking forward are one of the things that will help companies like that succeed in the future.