Madam Speaker, while a deal with the U.K. is certainly better than no deal at all, we have been put in this position because the Liberals, frankly, failed to maintain a better deal that we already had, which was the CETA agreement, the agreement that the Harper government negotiated with the European Union and that we had been trying to maintain with the United Kingdom. CETA is a much more liberalizing deal. It provides more market access for Canadian goods and services. It provides more labour protections for workers in Canada and the EU, and would have done so with the United Kingdom.
Why could we not keep the better deal we already had?