Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to intervene in this discussion. I represent Windsor West, which is right on the Detroit border in the United States.
Our peninsula Windsor-Essex County has been a trading component of our nation from its creation, from our first nations that were in the area and still are to this day, and we are working on reclaiming some of their rights for many reasons of colonialism, to the French settlement, followed by the British settlement. It is the oldest European settlement west of Montreal. I represent Sandwich Town.
About 40,000 vehicles, 10,000 of them trucks, per day traverse through my riding. The 40,000 vehicles not only bring as passengers visitors, but up to 10,000 doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who work in the Detroit region daily.
It was the founding of the logging industry originally, but most recently it has been the hotbed for the auto industry and manufacturing. Trade with the United States has been part of our way of life. It is our people who are interchanged, so the Canada-U.S. relationship is very important because families live on both sides of the border.
I have an American aunt. This is a normal thing: we have Canadians and Americans in our family units and our working units as well. Even our sports and culture are very much there.
We see American flags in my riding, but we will not find any fiercer Canadians, especially when it comes to issues like being against the war in Iraq, where Windsor and other areas fought to keep us out of that war.
I remember the days of debates here in the House of Commons, when Canada was going in that direction and we pulled ourselves back from that. A relationship is knowing when to tell a friend when they are wrong. Knowing when to intervene is something is the strength of a relationship, not a weakness by any means.
This agreement is important, no doubt. We have to look at the previous agreement and what takes place. There are some important things that need to be clarified in the debate. First of all, this agreement coming back to us is better and improved because the Liberal government did not do its job. Liberals did not want to listen to Tracey Ramsey, the former member for Essex, who forced and focused on the issues of the environment, dairy and labour that should have been in the original agreement.
In fact, there were Liberals who would say certain negative things all the time, but this bill is coming back in this chamber for this vote because Liberals did not do their job. They do not want to have to be here. They would have loved to have dealt with this the first time, but the reality is Democrats were able to take Congress. When they took Congress, the Democrats had the opportunity to fix the deal, and they did.
I have heard in the chamber, many times, members pushing the government to support Democrats to get this improved, when they did nothing. They stayed down on it because it is a Trump-Trudeau deal. That is the reality of this deal in itself. We now have—