Mr. Speaker, I sit on the trade committee with the member opposite. I am pleased to see her rise, because she was silent when all of these amendments came forward. She said not one word when all of these amendments came to the trade committee. Therefore, I am very curious as to why she is rising in the House today, when she was silent in the period of time when we we were going clause by clause in committee before the House rose for the holidays. That is shocking to me. If there were legitimate concerns that she wanted to bring forward, why did she not do so when she had the opportunity with the minister and chief negotiators? Was she under a gag order? That is how it appeared on the Liberal side during clause-by-clause.
Even one of the European Union's standing committees released a report saying that it was against signing CETA because there were no economic benefits, there would not be jobs. Similar reports have come from think tanks here in Canada. Unfortunately, the studies we have on CETA predate the Liberal government, so we do not have current statistics on where we are at and, of course, this is post Brexit.
There are many moving parts in CETA. Trade with Europe is too important to get wrong. This deal can be fixed and these amendments speak to the things that could fix this trade deal in a way that would represent Canadians' interests. There was no attempt to do so in the negotiating phases. Therefore, as parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to those we represent to bring forward the amendments that we feel will best benefit.
The other thing that shocks me about the member opposite is that she did not support my proposal to have more people appear before the committee. We heard from a very limited number of voices. In fact, the witnesses brought by the Liberals were all for CETA, so there was no balance in the conversation. There was an unwillingness by the government to listen to any opposing views or any concerned Canadians.