Madam Speaker, rather than shouting over the heckling of the Conservatives, I will be able to speak in a more conversational tone.
The NDP has always been for fair trade, not for chapter 11 provisions that allow pesticide bans to be overridden by chemical companies that are producing products that they know are toxic and not for people to override the kind of collective bargaining process that takes place in any sort of healthy society where workers can get together and negotiate a better wage together. The NDP has always favoured fair trade agreements.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives have not put in place and have not proposed to the House a fair trade agreement. They are proposing the same kind of failed policies that did not work under the Liberals.
When we have a hemorrhaging of jobs in the softwood industry, in the steel sector and in shipyards across the country, we would expect the government to take its responsibilities and to be very thoughtful in what it presents to the House, but that is clearly not the case. The softwood sellout that has killed about one-third of the jobs in my area in the softwood industry is just one example of that.
The member who references the one in three is absolutely right. His government brought in policies that killed, in my area, one out of every three jobs in that sector, and it has been like that right across British Columbia. It was a failed policy and the government never should have signed that agreement.