Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, who has the good fortune of representing a constituency whose reputation for agrifood technology is well deserved. When it comes to agriculture, she knows what she is talking about. Her riding has a lot going on in terms of agriculture.
The Liberal government's handling of the dairy products file is an epic failure. It started with diafiltered milk. How is it that diafiltered milk is still an issue? The government was supposed to keep that promise in its first 100 days. If the NDP were in power, we would have dealt with the issue because it is really not that hard. All it takes is harmonizing the definition at the border with the definition for the processing industry.
Adding another 17,000 tonnes of fine cheese to what we already import is a major concern. I have talked about cheese makers in my riding: Saint-Guillame, Lemaire, Agropur. These three cheese makers may go out of business. The equivalent of their combined output is what could be coming into Canada.
Of course, these three medium-sized cheese makers employ not two or three people, but hundreds of the people who live in my region. There are regional economies. This is about the regions. Saint-Guillaume and Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil are great little municipalities. Their economies are diversified and bustling thanks to these great, prize-winning businesses. Given the time, I would list all of the prizes that Saint-Guillaume and Notre-Dame-du-Bon-Conseil cheeses have won. It is incredible.
The point is that the government said it would deal with this in its first 100 days. It did not, and now it is making things even worse. Of course we will not stand for that. We have to make things better. We need a good agreement with Europe, one that the NDP can back too.