Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the government House leader. He suggested that all of us would have an opportunity. I guess he meant to vote, because he is certainly limiting the opportunity for us to speak to a particular bill. I guess the government House leader's view of things is that as long as we get to vote, even if it is in the negative, we have had our say.

The good folks in Welland did not send me here to stand up all the time just to vote without my telling the House what they think. That is what they send me here for. It is to tell the government what they believe and what they think.

Let me tell the House what free trade has done for the folks in Welland. We have seen one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Nearly every single manufacturing job they had in Welland is gone.

The government House leader talks about agricultural processors. Let us start with the canning factory in St. Davids , which left to go to the United States, because it could. The Bick's pickle plant left because it could. It went to the United States. The Heinz Canada plant in Leamington left. Why? It was because it could go to the United States. I could go on and on and list them.

The issue is not whether we should enter into trade. That was abundantly clear long before I came to this place. This country is a trading nation. I do not think that is the issue. The bottom line is that there are many impacts associated with these free trade agreements. That is why they are so important to debate, because the impact can be staggering.

In my riding is the St. Catharines GM plant, where I used to be employed. When I was there, not that long ago, 9,200 people worked in that plant. Now there are 1,500. If we look at the GM chain across Ontario, we see there used to be 35,000 employed. Now there are fewer than 8000. Where did they go? They went to Mexico. How did they get there? NAFTA gave them the right to go there.

There are winners and losers. That is why we need the time to debate who the winners and losers are, because fundamentally, that is what drives this debate. I do not disagree with the House leader that we need a trading agenda, but when there are winners and losers, we need the opportunity to tell the House and the government side the potential impact on us in certain parts of this country. Then it can try to balance those impacts, because ultimately, it is Canadians who are injured by free trade.

There is no question that there are winners. However, to force it in such a manner and make it sound as if our economy will come crashing down tomorrow if we do not have a free trade deal with Honduras is truly beyond words. Surely we do not need to use time allocation on a free trade deal with Honduras. That just seems beyond the pale in this particular case.

I look to the hon. House leader to find a way to negotiate with the other side. I recognize that we might be tough to negotiate with, but we are not supposed to be easy to negotiate with. We are the opposition. No one said we were supposed to be patsies.

If the government would come to the table in an honest and sincere way, maybe we could strike some deals. One never knows, but one should keep trying.

Malcolm Allen

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