Mr. Speaker, I am a little bit surprised that we find ourselves here debating the bill. The bill is 21 words long, and if the government were convinced that this was an important initiative that was going to improve our competitiveness and help Canadians find jobs because of these things, the bill would have been referred to committee before second reading, where we could hear from those experts who would bring some of the details.
We are going to go through a lot of debate here and it just does not seem to be an efficient way. The member dismisses the loss of $148 billion worth of trade with the U.S. as not a big deal because we are going to deal with Colombia, which is presupposing that we will have the deal with Colombia, based on the debate we have had in the House. I do not think he should take it for granted.
Why does the member believe that our relationship with the United States is not still significantly the driver in terms of overall competitiveness, and in fact the future recovery of Canada, which it is so inextricably linked with? Why does he dismiss it just because we are looking at Peru and Colombia to make up some differences?