Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech from the member for Peace River and I have been listening to the debate in the House during question period as well. It seems to me that the debate that is going on focuses on these trade agreements, which have caused enormous problems for Canada. One has to only look at NAFTA and what happened with softwood lumber.
Of course, now the debate has become totally focused on the question of protectionism. It seems to me that what is being missed here is the reality that the steel industry in Canada and the United States is already highly integrated and complementary. What we should be doing is focusing our attention and leverage, as the Canadian government and as Canadians, on working with the reality we have, ensuring that if there is a buy American policy that Canada is exempted from it.
I do not know if the member saw a very good article in today's National Post by Erin Weir, who is the chief economist for the United Steelworkers union that represents both American and Canadian steelworkers, but I think it makes very strong arguments about the North American market and how it is complementary. We should be working to achieve job enhancement in sectors such as steel and automotive.
The other point I would make is that when one has a major stimulus package, one would hope that the emphasis of it is to protect and enhance jobs in our local communities. Yet, we saw nothing of this in the Canadian budget. We saw billions of dollars of expenditure, which the government says it is going to put forward in terms of infrastructure, but there is nothing to emphasize or tell us that those funds will actually be used within Canada to produce Canadian jobs that will benefit people. I ask the member to comment on that.