Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right that we need a trade framework that enables a Canadian government to have a plan and take action on such a plan.
With the Unifor negotiations with GM going on, a lot of experts on television recently have been talking about the auto industry, which has been no small part of the conversation about how, since the signing of NAFTA, we have seen tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the auto industry flee Canada and go to Mexico. Over time, that becomes the question.
Yes, we want to trade with other people, but we started off with things to trade. If we do not have a strategy and do not engage in a proper trade framework, we may wake up decades later—not overnight but later, which is the point we are getting to with some of the agreements—and realize we just do not have anything to trade anymore; and we are not capable of generating the kinds of quality jobs here at home that are going to sustain our communities. That should not have been the point, signing those agreements back then. Advocates of those agreements did not say that was the point.
We need the courage to look at the data and say, if that is what is resulting from these agreements, then we need to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results.