Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his question. I did hear it and I appreciate his comments.
I said at the beginning that we were not opposed to free trade, if he wanted to talk about trade policy. We said, basically, that we do not believe in the model the government presents to us, which is a free trade model. There are other models of trade out there that we would be happy to sit down, investigate and discuss.
Clearly we understand we are a trading nation. We understand that we need to continue to trade. We are saying there are other ways to do it besides the free trade model, and we would like to explore them on this side of the House.
The government, in its wisdom, if we can call it that, has decided with its friends in the Liberal Party that the only model it wants to look at, the only model it would use for a template, is the free trade model constructed in 1988 by Brian Mulroney. That is the decision the government has made.
We are asking government members to bring forth some others that we have suggested and let us explore them. Why not do that? It seems to me that if this is a House that wants to make Parliament work and wants to cooperate, let them bring those forward and let us sit down as part of the trade committee and actually have a discussion about trade models. Why is it always assumed that the one model fits all situations and somehow it is good for all of us, all of the time? No one lives their life that way. There is not one of us in the House who does the same thing every day, all the time, always. We do not do that, but we seem to be struck in this rut when it comes to free trade.
I suggest that the government bring forward another model that we have suggested we might want to look at, and perhaps it will find an agreement from this side.