Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to have this opportunity to talk about Canada's supply management system and to support a bill that will prevent the government from further undermining the agricultural sector during free trade agreement negotiations.
Supply management is very important to a number of agricultural sectors in Canada. It ensures a decent income for farmers and fair prices for consumers. It is part of a vision for a more co-operative economy.
Supply management is also part of the NDP way of thinking. A long time ago, the NDP's predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, included individuals such as Thérèse Casgrain. More recently, former MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau was a staunch defender of the supply management sector, specifically dairy production.
The agricultural sector is a very important sector, but the Canadian government has sold it out repeatedly during international trade agreement negotiations. It happened with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and Europe, or CETA, and again with the recent Canada-United States-Mexico agreement.
The markets in other countries, and especially the dairy market in the United States, are very competitive. The United States would like to see us adopt their dairy market. As a result of all of the concessions that the Canadian government made while negotiating free trade agreements, our industry has been getting more similar to the U.S. market.
Dairy farmers in the U.S. are currently in crisis, and some of them are taking their own lives because their farms are no longer profitable. This is not because they cannot produce enough, but because they produce too much. The economic model would have them produce more and more and try to develop export markets, but that model does not work.
Some Canadian dairy farmers own businesses that are smaller than those in the United States. They have a stable, decent income. They produce all of the dairy products that Canadians need. This system works very well.
The supply management industry is under attack for essentially ideological reasons. The supply management system is important, and we must do more.
Canadian governments of all stripes have consistently failed to properly protect the supply management system.
What can we do?
The government does not give Parliament much space or much of a role in these negotiation processes. We saw this with CUSMA, and we are now seeing it again with the agreement between the United Kingdom and Canada. Parliament often does not get to see the text of these free trade agreements before they are signed. By then, there is very little time left to debate the bill before the components of the agreement are implemented.
When could Parliament have an influence on the negotiating process? It has not been for lack of trying in the past. In five years, I have seen several members ask questions about this issue while negotiations were under way. Once the agreement is signed and provided to Parliament, parliamentarians and Canadians, it is too late, and that is when we see that concessions have been made in the supply-managed sectors.
I think that Bill C-216 is important for defending not only supply management, but also the concept, which I strongly support, that Parliament needs to be more involved in the negotiation process.
I heard my Conservative colleague say that he did not like this bill because if the issue of supply management were put on the table, our free trade partners might target these sectors more. However, I do not think that we can defend supply management by ignoring it. That does not seem to me to be an effective strategy, and it does not inspire much confidence.
If Parliament wants to focus on the supply-managed sectors and do everything it can to defend supply management, given that we have a government that regularly makes promises about supply management and then does not keep them, this bill will allow us to truly say that Parliament supports supply management.
I will once again thank my colleague from Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel for introducing this bill. As I said at the beginning, I am very pleased and proud to support Bill C-216.