Sure, thank you very much.
I think that at past hearings you've heard from representatives of the organic industry, and in the next hour you will as well. I think that they'll be able to speak to that.
My main point is that I see Bill C-18 as a missed opportunity. It's focusing on issues like plant breeders' rights and protecting intellectual property, which are going to have virtually no impact on my operation and operations like mine that are small scale and geared to the local market. It's really not going to have any discernible impact.
Most of the varieties that I use are old heritage varieties some of which were developed more than 100 years ago. The diversity of vegetable seed that was available 50 years ago was much greater than it is now after decades of increasing protection of intellectual property in this area. I don't see that protecting the property rights of plant breeders and large corporations is going to do anything to increase my access to new varieties, because all of the research and development is going into fewer and fewer crops. There may be lots of varieties of wheat available, lots of varieties of soy being developed, but most of those are being developed so that they can accept pesticides so that they work well under an industrial system of agriculture, which is not the sort of agriculture that I'm practising. I just think there are so many other things we could do as a farm community, as a community of people interested in food policy, to promote agricultural growth, but I don't see it in this bill.