Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Malpeque for his comments and for his support of this bill going to committee. I hope we can expect the Liberal Party to support the bill coming back to the House for third reading.
The hon. member raised a number of issues, some of which I agree and some of which I respectfully disagree, but I am not trying to rewrite history or be a revisionist historian. I want to ask the hon. member about one principle. This principle underlies our efforts to establish new trading arrangements with countries around the globe, whether they happen to be the nintieth economy in the world or the first economy in the world, and that is the principle of rules based trading. The principle that goes along with rules based trading is reciprocity.
The idea that we have clear rules that dictate trade and that those rules are reciprocal for both parties is fundamental to whether we will survive as a trading nation. Canada is certainly not large enough, with 33 million people, to depend upon ourselves for trade. There is a group in the House that wants to put barriers up to trade. I have not seen that from the Liberals and I hope I do not.