Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague back as well.
As a small business owner myself prior to Parliament, I share some of his concerns over the direction of government.
I hope the trip to Washington by the Industry minister and his partner in Ontario was not seen as a success. They did not meet with a single senior legislator who has any influence on what is happening with the auto industry in the United States. They could have accomplished more by simply meeting in Toronto rather than spending taxpayer dollars to go to Washington to sit with staffers.
The problem may not have been created in Elgin—Middlesex—London or St. Thomas and other places, but the deregulation philosophy that his government purports is the very one that put us in this trouble in the first place. It is the one that leaders in Europe and other parts of the world are saying needs to be revised, yet the Prime Minister made a speech in South America just this past week that echoed President Bush's same sentiments of keeping on the same track on which we have been going. Remedying the problem with the same issues that put us here in the first place is no remedy at all.
Is the member's government willing to consider a reform of our regulatory instruments so we can avoid future crises in the marketplace and in investment cycles? Surely his government has played some role in the collapse of this economy and contributed to the one around the world.