Madam Chair, I thank the hon. member for his relevant question and for supporting supply management.
As I said earlier, the use of milk substitutes alone results in an annual shortfall of $70 million for Quebec dairy producers, and of $175 million for Canadian producers. This is a very concrete, current and unfortunate impact.
The hon. member gave a good example, namely the softwood lumber issue, regarding which some countries, that is the United States, do not hesitate to apply protectionist measures to protect their industry. Of course, in the case of softwood lumber, we and just about everyone else, including American consumers, think that the United States used what could be termed as delaying tactics. It is possible to apply some measures without completely closing the borders.
Back home, we just witnessed something very sad. A furniture manufacturing plant just shut down. Over a period of a few months, 175 workers have lost their jobs. As we know, the furniture and textile industries are two sectors that are experiencing problems and for which it would be possible to apply some protectionist measures to protect them from the Asian competition, without totally closing our markets.
Therefore, I do not see why, in the agriculture sector, which is faring a lot better than some others, we would not use the measures available to us to protect our supply management system.