International Trade  Mr. Speaker, those were nice words from the trade minister, but in January Canada posted a walloping $2.5 billion trade deficit, the second-highest in our history. Our dismal trade performance is especially worrying given the weakness of the dollar, usually a boon to exporters, and the economic rebound in the United States, our largest foreign market.

Russia  Mr. Speaker, Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot, Iraqi war veteran, and member of the Ukrainian parliament, has been held as a prisoner of war in Russia since June 24, 2014. Last summer, Nadiya was kidnapped by Russian armed and Russian-led forces and illegally transferred to Russia.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her question. I also want to apologize because I will answer in English. I am not ready to answer in French, but I will try to do so eventually. I strongly believe that we are facing a couple of related economic problems right now. One is this hollowing out of the middle class, which we have been discussing at great length today, and to which I do think there are government solutions.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I think the member points to a real problem. The reality is that technology and advances in technology started off by allowing us to have just-in-time manufacturing where we did not need to keep great inventories of goods. We could get the goods to the factories just at the moment they needed them.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for York West. I am pleased to have the opportunity to join this important debate. Over the past 30 years, the Canadian economy has doubled in size. However, median household income has only increased by 15%. A report released last week by the CIBC shows that this trend has only gotten worse since the 2008-09 recession.

Finance  Mr. Speaker, the IMF has issued a warning about the inflated Canadian housing market, cautioning that home prices have jumped more than 60% over the past 15 years. Canadian families with a personal debt burden that the IMF warns is among the highest in the OECD are at risk of $100,000 losses they can ill afford.

Foreign Affairs  Mr. Speaker, Igor Sechin and Vladimir Yakunin are two close friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. While both have been sanctioned by the United States, they are not on Canada's list. The media have described Canada's sanctions against Rosneft, Mr. Sechin's company, as “relaxed”.

Citizenship and Immigration  Mr. Speaker, in an email to the Conservatives about his plans to strip Muslim women of their right to wear the niqab at citizenship ceremonies, the immigration minister got the basic facts wrong. In a cynical political ploy, the government, he said, will appeal a court decision “allowing people to wear the hijab while taking the oath”.

The Economy  Mr. Speaker, a recent Conference Board study shows that Canada's younger generations are earning less and receiving fewer pension benefits than their parents. It states, “young Canadians may have a lower lifetime earning potential than any generation before”. There is no more dire indictment of a country's economic performance than the prospect that our future may be poorer than our past.

Census  Mr. Speaker, that is simply not true. Everyone in business knows that we live in the age of big data. That is why Canada's leading economists and the CFIB are united in calling for the return of the long form census. As Roger Martin of the University of Toronto said, in direct contradiction of what we just heard, “It is just disinformation to say the current survey works”.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his excellent question. As many in the House know, he has a long-standing and deep interest and expertise in all of Canada's waterways. I raised the issue of Prince Rupert precisely because it is symptomatic of the high-handed, my-way-or-the-highway conduct of the current government, which we are again seeing manifested in this dispute with Newfoundland and Labrador.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, the history that my hon. colleague cites has provided ample proof of why Canada's provinces today do not feel they have a counterparty in Ottawa that wants to work with them, that wants to co-operate with them, and even whose written word can be trusted. It is absurd and embarrassing that we in the House are reduced to parsing emails and letters between a province and the federal government to try to prove what exactly was meant.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has an important point. I very much agree with him that this hits the fundamental issue of trust and transparency. A lot of our discussion today feels as if it were some kind of cheap detective novel or divorce case, a he-said versus she-said issue, as we parse exactly what the email did and did not contain and what the intentions of the different parties were.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, the quote cited by the hon. member misses the point. There is no dispute between the federal government and Newfoundland and Labrador about the overall benefits of CETA. Indeed, there is no dispute between the party opposite and my own about the overall benefits of CETA.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to join this important debate. Newfoundland and Labrador's support for CETA hinged to a significant degree on the Government of Canada's promise to help the industry adjust to the recent removal of minimum processing requirements.