Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from the Bloc, the agriculture critic, for his intervention today in bringing forward the motion from the agriculture committee.
The Government of Canada, the Conservative Party of Canada, fully supports our dairy farmers. There is no question that they have gone through some tough times with BSE and from the increase of the amount of imports that have been coming in through real protein concentrates. Instead of imports coming through as fluid milk, which is what was in our original trade agreements, we now have a more difficult situation. We have a number of derivative products from milk flowing into the country, which is no doubt upsetting the balance in the way we manage our supply managed industries.
We have a problem and we recognize that. Our concern is the timing. I talked about this at the agriculture committee. We have a problem with timing in bringing forward this motion. Right now, invoking an article 28 under the GATT really would be an irritant at this delicate stage of the negotiations we are in at the World Trade Organization.
There is no doubt that we have to be at the table through these WTO negotiations, as our Minister of Agriculture has said numerous times, to represent our supply managed industries, whether it is milk producers or poultry producers. We have to be there defending their interests at the table. I fear that if we were to come forward with an article 28 we may irritate our trading partners exponentially, which would make it more difficult for us to do a good job of protecting supply management in the current discussions at the WTO.
I want to ask my colleague from the Bloc if he would care to comment on this whole issue of timing, of dealing with this sensitive issue and trying to get the most out of the WTO for our producers, proceeding and making the appropriate changes under the new WTO agreement that hopefully is coming forth, and then providing the tariffication we require to protect supply management.