Madam Chair, I want to thank my hon. colleague for the great work he does in our committee along with his other colleagues from other parties as well. We work very well together. Because of the non-partisan kind of work we do, we have been able to achieve a great number of things.
My hon. colleague asked what tools we have. The greatest tool we have is the tool of educating people in what supply management is all about. If Canada has failed in any area, it has probably been in this area. Perhaps some of that fault lies with the sectors of the supply management communities by basically not having explained it to our friends.
As was recently mentioned, we met with our New Zealand counterparts and those people did not understand. They thought supply management was an arm of government, that somehow supply management was a great plan of government that allowed us to function in that way. That is not the case. The belief that there are huge subsidy dollars going into the supply management sector is another fallacy.
A lot needs to be done. For those partners that we have at WTO, and there are 147 other countries involved in this partnership, we should not, as has been already mentioned, be trading one sector against another.
Tonight we have talked a great deal about article XXVIII. It should be pointed out for all who are listening and watching the debate this evening that article XXVIII is only wished by the groups supporting supply management in the dairy sector. Those in other sectors of the SM5 do not support article XXVIII being used at this time.
We have to be very careful that not only do we trade other aspects of agriculture, but that we also not trade one aspect of the supply management sector against the other. There is very great danger in that as well.
The greatest tool we have is education. I was at the round in Cancun, where I saw in our own Canadian delegation of about 150 people, on one side of the room the group representing the trading groups, the grains and oilseeds, and on the other side of the room the supply management sector. It was a very divided group. It was divided not only in terms of where they sat in the room where the discussions were going on, but they were divided in their opinion of what we should be doing at the round.
We have a lot of educating to do. If we clearly understood and if people in other parts of the world and our other partners understood in the round what this is all about, that this is the fairest way, basically we could have a lot more countries supporting us in our efforts to achieve what we want at the WTO.