Mr. Speaker, I suppose that question could be asked of the Liberals on many occasions, but certainly on the matter of article XXVIII as it relates to the milk protein supplements.
This is something the Liberals were asked to address eight or nine months ago. The dairy industry came to us and we gave the same reasons as are being given today. We felt it was premature at that time. We still had some time to go. There was a time element that had to be expended and we felt we should address that. We have now gone beyond that time and there appears to be a greater urgency for doing so.
I do not believe we can bring every element of the debate into the House in terms of the negotiations in Geneva, but I believe this is one that we need to. We did not deal with this matter very effectively with butter. We know what happened in that industry. We lost the ice cream industry. How long are we going to stand by and let the importers bring in product? The processors are involved in this too, obviously. They are the reason we have this problem.
Do we really care about Canada? Do we really care about what goes on in rural Canada today? We could import everything we want. There is very little we cannot import from other countries, but I believe it is very important as a country to stand behind our rural industry. It is time for us to move and time to take action.