Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the Liberals on one day are all in favour of trade agreements, then on another day they do not like them any more, and then they go back to saying yes again. We have seen this a bit with FIPA. The Liberals just do not know where they stand. It gives us whiplash wondering what they believe in. It is really hard to know.
Yes, we did support the trade agreement with Jordan, as was pointed out already. In terms of the approach that we need to take, it needs to be combined with diplomacy and an effort to make sure that we are not one just dimensional. When we see the hollowing out of our diplomacy, we lose on trade. That is why the Secretary-General of ASEAN said the following:
The goodwill is there. The name is there. But you don't see the a sustained effort of trying to project it out.
He continued:
What Canada can do is to transform its expertise in those areas of peacekeeping, peace-building into a more mediating role. A country like Norway has been very active and engaged.
I could not agree with him more. We were shut out of East Asia Pacific table. Others are in, we are out. The government claims that it is great because we are signing deals with Lichtenstein. It is very sad.