Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the two parties are fighting over who are the better free traders in the country and in our history, when any analysis of the difficult economy we are in will say, and everyone is agreeing, that it is unfettered, unregulated free trade globally driven by greed that has caused the difficulty we are experiencing now.
The government should be engaged in how we should restructure our economy to focus on the domestic needs of Canadians. Perhaps we should be backing away from this discussion about free trade, getting ourselves organized and encouraging other countries to do the same so we can right this ship and move forward with some confidence so that at the end of the day, no matter what we do, everybody will benefit.
I remember growing up in the little town of Wawa where 1,200 people mined ore and sent it to Sault Ste. Marie where 12,000 people turned it into steel and sent it out to communities across this country where hundreds of thousands of people made buses, cars and boats. It was the advent of free trade that brought a collapse to all of those communities and has given what we see today, which is a very difficult circumstance for many working men and women across this country--