Madam Chair, I appreciate the opportunity tonight to put a few thoughts on the record on this really important issue. I want to say at the outset that it is really not as complicated as the government would present. It is actually rather simple, particularly when we sit down and talk with farmers, as I did last weekend in my constituency office, and they share with us what it is they want the government to do.
They want the government to stand up for them. They want to know they have an ally. They want to know they have a friend. They want to know that the government has the backbone to stand up to other jurisdictions and say we will protect our industry, because they have seen over the last eight or nine months agriculture attacked by the U.S., by BSE, and now in this instance by other jurisdictions, by the WTO taking away from us our ability to grow an industry to serve our own needs and to export into the larger world.
They do not see, in the minister here tonight and the government, somebody, a government, that is willing to stand with them shoulder to shoulder in these battles. They feel like they have been let down. They feel like they are alone out there. They feel like no one understands the impact this is having on them and their livelihood, on their way of life.
I am here tonight to say that it is time to live up to the promises the Liberals made during the last federal election, things the Prime Minister said. He is on the record as saying that he supports the maintenance of supply management, a fair agricultural model, and that he will personally get involved, so that at the end of the WTO negotiations, producers under supply management can continue to meet the needs of Canadian consumers and obtain all their revenue from the marketplace based on their costs of production, including a fair return on their labour and capital. That is what he said during the election.
That was a good statement, except, as with everything else, when you guys are out on the hustings campaigning and looking for power, you will say anything to get elected--