Madam Speaker, I will start with the last point raised by my colleague. In terms of Bill C-40, it is not that complicated for us to implement. As I indicated in the latter part of my remarks, the government is choosing the avenue that is most appropriate.
Second, the ruling is based not on the fact that there was a disadvantage, but that there was an increased risk even though no harm had yet been proven. That is roughly the sense of it. That is not the larger issue with the legislation. We comply and I believe we still get to protect the Canadian industry as well as before.
That being said, obviously we need to continue to do more to protect various industries under the World Trade Organization, agriculture more particularly. This is where both the member and I will disagree with some of the comments we heard earlier. This form of a Hobbesian state of nature that was described earlier, as if we could simply ignore international trading rules and that would be better, is sheer and utter nonsense. That was the NDP member. I see the member across seems to be worried that I somehow attributed that to him.
I, for one, am of the view that we need stricter international trading rules. In that environment, Canadian industry can better compete. I have no doubt that the farmers of my constituency are every bit as good as farmers elsewhere, not only in Canada, which is already the case, but internationally as well.
What we need is good trading rules so as to prevent countries from bombarding each other with subsidies, as the EU and the United States are doing now. This has the effect of lowering world prices and of course damaging Canadian agricultural interests in the process. And it is not just Canadian interests that are damaged in the process. Not that long ago, I was reading in a publication about the state of farming in Africa.
Madam Speaker, you and I are both members of the Canada-Africa parliamentary friendship group. We have been told, for instance, how the price of cotton in Africa has gone down to virtually nothing, which means that some of the poorest people in the world producing that particular agricultural commodity cannot get any price for it. People are starving because people in other countries are artificially subsidizing a commodity that has the effect of lowering that price.
What do we need, then? We need stronger trading rules, not weaker ones. We need a good multilateral environment that would protect farmers everywhere from the large treasuries of some countries when they do this kind of damage, not only to agriculture but to other areas as well.