Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question. I appreciate the member's question.
I have two answers to that.
One, as former minister of international trade over four and a half years I was busy engaging in the most ambitious and active trade agenda our country had ever seen. Members should remember that we did trade agreements with 46 different countries around the world, something that the previous Liberal government had never gotten done.
The second answer is that the Comeau case was not decided until after we left government. Until the Comeau case was decided by a lower court, it was generally accepted that the constitutional law in Canada allowed provinces to interfere to a certain degree in international trade and to put up barriers for different reasons. Those included regulatory reasons, safety and health reasons, and also reasons that actually were simply protectionist in nature. The Comeau case was decided post-election. A court actually established that there is truly a constitutional right to free trade.
We welcome the Liberal government's intervention in that case, because it is critically important for Canada and would open up a whole new opportunity for economic growth within our country.