Mr. Chair, when I spoke before I said that money has to be invested immediately. If discussions are to be held with George W. Bush, policies have to be adopted for dealing with the United States. I will return to this later. It is important to have those discussions and bring the necessary pressure to bear. However, money must be invested immediately. As well, there are policies that can be applied, such as cull cow policies and using Article XXVIII of the GATT on milk proteins and butter oil. A few years ago, we ran into the same problem with cheese sticks.
I would add that we have to establish a balance of power, not that we should face off against the Americans and the Europeans. Still, practically eliminating subsidies here, while they are maintaining them or even increasing them, amounted to skewing the balance of power. Of course in some sectors that encourages imports.
Here is another example that can easily be applied: there are crops it is impossible to sell here because of the use of certain insecticides. We are right about that. Some insecticides cannot be used on tomatoes, since they could not be sold on the Canadian market. However, if those same tomatoes come from Mexico or the United States, and the same insecticide has been used, they may be sold in Canada. That is completely ridiculous! An insecticide that goes through customs does not cease to be an insecticide. There is a problem somewhere, and it is not at customs; it is in the government’s decisions. Those products should be banned, and we should demand that other countries meet the same environmental standards as the ones we impose on ourselves. That is a concrete step to take. These are things that we can say to the Americans.
The same principle applies to lumber. It is fine to tell the Americans that we will keep going, but the loan guarantees that we were seeking and that were promised by the Liberals, up to $800 million—which is inadequate—were never given. The Conservatives, who were in opposition, wanted more. They now have the perfect opportunity to enjoy being right. We therefore ask that they give more loan guarantees.