Mr. Speaker, there is no clearer illustration of just how out of touch Conservatives and Liberals are than that exchange we just had between two members. I like very much the standing committee chair for international trade, but how could they be more out of touch with what is happening across this country? At a time when we are hemorrhaging jobs, when there are hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, the committee chair did not mention that every single witness before the Standing Committee on International Trade who actually came from the shipbuilding industry said that this is going to kill their industry, that they are going to lose thousands of jobs.
Yet with complete complacency, just like they did with softwood lumber, killing that industry, Conservatives and Liberals are combining to say, “We do not care, we are all right, so we are going to just close shipyards right across the country”.
I would like to say to the public watching this morning, particularly shipyard workers in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Marystown, Newfoundland, in Lévis, Quebec, in the Washington yards in Vancouver, and in Victoria and Nanaimo, B.C., every single witness said this is going to kill our shipbuilding industry.
We have had a lot of lip service paid to fair trade. The reality is what countries are doing now around the world is protecting key industries. The Jones Act in the United States and that country's fair trade policies are one very good example. Americans have built on their shipbuilding industry. Conservatives and Liberals in this House are moving to kill ours.
I would like to ask the hon. member, who I like and respect as a person but quite frankly think he is completely out to lunch when it comes to economic policies, how he reacts to Alfred Komo from Halifax, who said:
It's a shame that the Liberal party of Canada feels that it has to remain a puppet of the Conservative government in supporting another bad free trade deal for Canada.
And he signs his name, “Another—