Agriculture Committee on May 29th, 2007

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

I am not saying that Barry's comments are not interesting, but I just finished reading the report, and I would like to congratulate Jean-Denis on his fine work.

In addition, since the work was done by committee members as well as by our excellent researcher and others, it would be a good idea to take the last five minutes to have Mr. Devolin call for the vote on Mr. Easter's motion. Then we could read the document quickly and vote on Mr. Atamanenko's motion on the Canadian Wheat Board. Since it has been before us for some time, I'm sure we all have made up our minds about it. Finally, we may have a few minutes left to finally discuss the report, which is what everyone here wants to do. Of course, we will have an opportunity to discuss this in full during the other meetings scheduled for this week. That would be interesting.

Congratulation on a job well done, Jean-Denis. I will definitely have further comments. For the time being, I am in the process of making notes on the report.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

It is not perfect!

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Exactly. Some things could be improved.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

That is out of order. That is not a point of order.

Go ahead, Mr. Devolin.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you.

I appreciate the suggestion, but at the beginning of this meeting we discussed Mr. Anderson's motion, which was that we should move directly to our report. I'm in a way a soft-spoken fellow, but I thought at the time that I made it pretty clear that I had some significant comments to make about all these motions. Before they came to a vote, I wanted the opportunity to lay out what I thought were good reasons to oppose this first motion by Mr. Easter.

I don't sense the excitement. I said I wanted to make my colleagues excited enough about some of the ideas I put forward that they would decide to vote against Mr. Easter's motion and come with me to try to work on some of these new ideas, and I don't sense that yet. Maybe the ones I've come up with so far aren't good enough. Hopefully, as we get down through the list here, I can hook them.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Miller, do you have a point of order?

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Yes, I do--or I think so. I'm just reflecting back on Mr. Bellavance's most recent comments. I'm just wondering if maybe you and the rest of us missed something; maybe he was insinuating that he wanted to revisit the first motion we dealt with today. Was that...?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I don't believe that's the point he was making. He did--

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Are you sure about that?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Yes.

That's not a point of order.

Go ahead, Mr. Devolin.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Anyway, that's what I mean. Put your hand up when you want to say, “Barry, I agree. We should defeat this thing and we should talk about these other topics that you're putting forward.”

I talked about a young farmers' capital assistance program. I've heard about Quebec. My second idea was maybe coming up with some ideas to help our genetics exporters from Canada. A third idea that I think is really timely and compelling and may in fact grab the attention of my colleagues is the whole area of biofuels. I mean, the government is doing a lot on biofuels already, and it's creating interesting opportunities for Canadian farmers. In Ontario, anyway, it seems to be mostly the corn producers who are directly involved with it at this point, but we're hoping in the future there are other crops that will also become more involved in Ontario.

Two weeks ago, when we were in Washington, it was interesting to hear all the discussion about biofuels down there and the impact the U.S. Farm Bill would have on that, but I think that's another area. Maybe we should be coming up with a proposal for the minister and for the government, saying, listen, this is an exciting opportunity for Canadian farmers, biofuel research. Maybe we should be working on that. Maybe we should be encouraging the minister to direct a portion of the funds that are being saved with the changes to the farm families options program and put it towards a biofuels strategy. That's something that would help farmers across the country. It's a positive thing for the environment as well if we use biofuels instead of fossil fuels. I think that's another place where we could make a positive contribution and actually--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Devolin, the bells are ringing. We were scheduled to go till 5:30.

We have a motion to adjourn from Mr. Devolin. All in favour?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We're adjourned.