Mr. Speaker, I wish I could give the member that feeling of confidence about the driver of the bus, but I am afraid I cannot.
In the last Parliament when the Liberal Party formed the government, there were a lot of discussions with the U.S. about a potential deal, but I would say that within our caucus the bar was set very high, extremely high, so high that the deal would have to be so good as to be almost perfect, because we were winning on the other track.
What happened, I think, when our former minister of industry went over to the other side in a sort of horrible act of treason, if we want to call it that, was that he then came under the influence of the new republicanization of Canada's government. I think he was convinced by the Prime Minister. They had a little chat with President Bush in Cancun and figured out a way to do this deal. The deal had been rejected by our Liberal caucus.
This deal was part of a package. We are still waiting for what the Prime Minister came away with from that meeting, because he talked about the fact that for travel in the western hemisphere we would get something less than a passport, but that had been on the table for about a year and a half.