Mr. Speaker, it is nice to finally see the minister up on his feet on this bill, even though it did not actually happen until after time allocation was introduced.
I would think the minister would have cared enough about the bill to be the one to introduce it, but so far we have only had about 10 minutes of debate on the bill. As well, the speech given by the member for Simcoe—Grey was, frankly, disgraceful. She could not stop laughing during her speech, and it happened after midnight. We did not get very much information, and the minister has yet to actually give a proper speech in the House of Commons defending this bill and explaining why it is important for the government to pass it.
Several parts of the bill deal with the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, which raises serious concerns. Europe has said no to that, but the government is implementing some of those measures in this bill. The numbers the minister mentioned in terms of going from $7 billion to $38 billion are, of course, anecdotal. We have been calling for years for stronger reporting measures to accurately capture how much is being lost to counterfeiting; the government has not yet taken any action on that issue, nor has it put anything into the bill to strengthen the data that we are going to receive.
Why did the minister not feel the bill was important enough to merit a full speech on it before time allocation was brought in?