Mr. Speaker, the trade file is interesting, and I will give a good example of that.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien decided that he would go to China to increase trade. What did he do? He brought stakeholders, including provincial government representatives, and I believe there were even premiers; all sorts of business executives; and labour organizations. There was a good cross-section of Canadians who went to China. I believe he even went to other Asian countries, but I am not 100% sure of that. At the end of the day, we saw hundreds of millions of dollars in trade going back and forth as a direct result of that trip.
How does that compare to the current Prime Minister? First of all, it took the Conservatives quite a while to wake up to the reality that China is a significant country and has a lot to offer in terms of potential trade in the future. However, I believe that in 2009, possibly 2010, the Prime Minister went to China. What did he deliver? Well, I believe he came back with two panda bears, and he thought that was a great achievement. However, when I was part of the Manitoba legislature, the premier was able to get two panda bears.
It is all about way that one approaches trade. The government members stand in their place and say they have done well because they have another trade agreement. They say they have 30-plus trade agreements. Some may applaud, and yes it is good to see trade agreements. However, I think Canadians are concerned not just with having trade agreements, but with our addressing the whole trade file as well.
We must recognize that there are other countries in the world that we need to do a little more work on. I say this because the Conservatives have dropped the ball, turning a huge trade surplus into a huge trade deficit.
Let us talk about how the government manages to mess up trade. It is all about the current Prime Minister and the Conservative government's poor performance. It is about what is happening on the Prairies today. We have megapiles of grain throughout the Prairies. There is so much grain, it is not only in the bins but it also stored outside the bins in plastic. We have known about this for months. It is not something new. The government would have been aware of this back in September or October.
We have all of this grain in the Prairies, but then we look to the Pacific Ocean and we have empty ships there. There is a disconnect: that grain should be in the ships. As a direct result of this, Canada is losing millions of dollars worth of contracts because the Conservative government did not do its job.