Mr. Speaker, there was little comment in the minister's speech. The minister is a failed minister with a failed trade strategy.
It is not just the softwood lumber sellout that killed tens of thousands of jobs right across the country. It is not just the buy America sellout that has been condemned as the second worst agreement ever signed by Canada. It is not just the shipbuilding sellout. It is not just the consistent, wrong-headed policies of this government. The reality is that when we have signed bilateral trade agreements, our exports to those markets have gone down in real terms. The minister has tried to hide behind that by using inflation-related dollars but, in real terms, our exports go down to those markets after we have signed trade agreements in every case except one.
The minister simply cannot defend the record of his government and he certainly cannot defend what the Conservatives and Liberals have done on this agreement. They refused to hear from the Canadian Labour Congress, from some of the largest unions in the country and from the Colombian free and democratic labour movement. The only labour movements they would hear from were the government affiliated labour unions. They refused to hear from African Colombians and aboriginal Colombians.
Now we find out that this secret report the government has been hiding for the last six months refers to the murders, which are directly government-related to those communities, and also lesbian and gay Colombians.
We have a systematic obstruction, a refusal to get any sort of real input from the people who would be affected by this agreement and now we have closure. What a shame. I say shame on the Conservatives and shame on them all.