Mr. Chair, I certainly welcome the question.
I welcome the work of the member for Richmond—Arthabaska in terms of his fighting for producers in the agriculture committee and for the supply management industry in this country.
He is absolutely correct. The record will show that in the 2007 negotiations there was a proposal on the table that would have reduced the tariffs substantially for supply management and that would have basically made it impossible for our supply management industry to survive over even the short and medium term.
The government had the opportunity to reject and object to that proposal, and it did not. If those negotiations had been successful, then the industry would have been completely undermined. Those are the facts, and that is the reality.
That was an instance where the government was allowing supply management to be negotiated away. Thank heavens for other countries that stood up, and the agreement did not proceed.
Hopefully the government has now seen the light and will stand more firmly behind supply management, not just in rhetoric and words but in actual action. That is what we want to see here. We do know it is still on the table.