Madam Speaker, the Conservative government has admitted today that the buy American act is legal. The parliamentary secretary said that a few hours earlier. So we have made some progress in trade education with the Conservative government.
The member for Abbotsford talked about the fact that the budget may have some infrastructure funding, may because we do not actually trust the Conservatives to bring this in.
However, he did not raise of course the irony that if there is infrastructure money that is spent from Canadian taxpayers, that money could go to buy overseas third world steel. In other words, Canadian taxpayers' money, because we have no buy Canadian policy in place, would be used to fuel jobs in other countries. There is a real irony there.
President Obama did not say what the member purported him to say. He has actually said that the economic stimulus package and the buy American provisions in both the House of Representatives and the senate are going to go through and he is going to sign off on them in two weeks. They are legal. Buy American is legal.
Why is the government not bringing in buy Canadian provisions, so that Canadian taxpayers' money can go to fill Canadian jobs?