I just wanted to make a couple of points here. This is not about photo ops, not about splitting hairs. It's not about not supporting farmers or playing politics. The Prime Minister's announcement.... Yes, he is the Prime Minister of our country, and I respect him for that. What I have a problem with and what I don't understand is the way it was done. There is a democratic process. We're representatives of the people. We have an all-party committee that's working on a very important topic: we're going to be changing the way we look at “Product of Canada” labelling.
I don't understand why this committee.... It just appears in the announcement as if the work this committee is doing was not respected. There was no mention of the committee. There was nothing saying “I look forward to the report of the committee, thanks to the witnesses who were here, and let's move forward. As Prime Minister, I'm going to give priority to the hard work.”
It's not that we just want to get credit for it. I don't even know if I really feel like coming back to work on this thing, because I think the work has been done. That's how I feel. I'm not playing politics when I say that. I just wonder what the point is.
It's not only us. The work that has been done here to put this together, the research that has been done to give us this briefing, why are we going through it? If everything is done over there, let's just give it to them and go on. We've got other important issues to deal with in the next couple of weeks we're here. Let's get on with it. To me there's something that just doesn't make any sense here.
That's the point I want to make. It's not so much that we should all be getting credit for this. It's the fact that I don't think a democratic process has been respected.