Madam Speaker, I thank the government for bringing forward this bill, but it will forgive me if I do not give it a pat on the back for doing something it should have done years ago.
It was no surprise that the U.K. was going to need trade agreements with countries around the world. It had Brexit in 2017. We had a trade continuity agreement that the Liberals let expire, to the detriment of our businesses. They suffered by paying higher tariffs going into the U.K. because the Liberals let that continuity agreement expire.
Why did it take five years to get an agreement that is worse than the one we had previously? We used to have the CETA with the European Union, which provided better and more liberalizing access for Canada. Why did we have to wait five years to get a worse deal?