Mr. Chair, the member started off by talking about the last 13 years. I am very proud of what the Liberal government accomplished over the last 13 years. The Conservatives have a surplus but they will not use any of the surplus to give farmers the necessary cash. We did that a year ago. We put record payments out over the last two years because we turned a country that was virtually bankrupt into a country that had surpluses.
Why was the country near bankruptcy? It was near bankruptcy because of the Mulroney regime. The present Prime Minister has taken some of those very people who drove the country to near bankruptcy and has put them in his office and is using them for advisers. My goodness, that is not the way to go. We want to keep surpluses.
As a result of that Liberal record where we put the country and the economy into a surplus position, the present government now has some money to do things with. I would ask the government to consider the farm community in terms of utilizing those surpluses that we left it.
On supply management our record is strong. This party, the NDP and the Bloc have always supported supply management. As for that party over there, do members remember its Alliance policy platform? Do members remember its Reform policy platform? Some of those members sit in that caucus and their policy was not very supportive of supply management. In fact, their policy was to keep it and have a transition program in place while they moved to the market economy. That is not what supply management producers want to hear. They want to have strong support and strong action. When our party was in government we were in support of the supply management industry.