Evidence of meeting #45 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
—to the farmers that it deserves our immediate attention? It surely is something that deserves our attention before Parliament rises, especially acknowledging—and I think we will all acknowledge—that we are not likely to get through the report to its final stage.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Okay, Chair, I am glad to answer that.
The answer is yes, SRM is an extremely important matter. That is why I brought forward a motion two meetings ago that we've all voted on and unanimously agreed to after we listened to our witnesses. Yes, we know we're going to get to Mr. Bellavance's motion very shortly. We know it's the next thing on the table, but the intent here is to get back to our report, and if we can dispose of motions as quickly as we disposed of yours, then why not? Why have it sitting there on the agenda for another two or three weeks? Let's just do it.
That is the intent, and that is a teamwork approach meant to just dispose of a motion quickly without entering into lengthy debate.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Mr. Chair, I think it is appropriate that Alex gets a chance to at least read his own motion.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Without unanimous consent—which of course I think we have.
By all means, Alex, if you want to read your motion, then I have no issue with that.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
I will read my motion. I must say that I am going to have confused dreams tonight. I'll be dreaming of SRMs and honeybees. My motion is:
That the Committee recommend that the government follow in the footsteps of the Province of Saskatchewan and the over 40 Municipalities across Canada that have issued proclamations declaring May 29, 2010 as the Day of the Honey Bee by proclaiming May 29, 2010 as the National Day of the Honey Bee and that this be reported to the House.
(Motion agreed to)
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
There's unanimous consent. Very good.
Mr. Bellavance, you have the floor.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Thank you. This is what I thought I was doing from the start.
Mr. Chair, I want to make a motion to discuss my motion, the one we have discussed at this meeting and at several others, so I do not want to waste too much time. I assume that I have to read the motion asking for my motion to be brought forward.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
I guess you could, but to save some time I'll ask if there's unanimous consent to bring it forth. If I don't get unanimous consent, I'll need a motion to do it and we'll vote on the motion.
Do I have unanimous consent?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
We'll have debate on the motion. I guess at this point you should probably read it, André.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
This is my motion:
That the Committee recommend to the government that it immediately implement an assistance program for the cattle industry to help it cover the $31.70 per head, which represents the competitiveness gap between Canada and the United States caused by Canada's Specified Risk Material (SRM) standards; and that the Committee report to the House of Commons.
Conservative
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I'm still confused. We need a motion that actually states we're bringing this motion forward.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
He first indicated that he wanted to move a motion to bring it forth. Then I asked for unanimous consent. Then he read the motion so I would consider it.
We're resuming debate on it.
Mr. Lemieux.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thanks, Chair.
I'm not in favour of putting this motion in front of committee again.
The committee has discussed Mr. Bellavance's motion. We already debated it. At the end of the debate, the committee decided to set the motion aside, to table the motion, as they say.
But it's putting it aside and out of debate.
It must also be said that Mr. Bellavance introduced his motion after I introduced mine on the same issue. My motion urged the government to find solutions, without specifying exactly what they should be. We have to encourage dialogue and have more meetings with organizations and with cattle producers.
I say that because, if I recall correctly, I gave a good example during the last debate. When we were discussing hogs, a solution was proposed whereby an amount of money would be paid to each hog producer.
After a lot of work, Mr. Chair, that turned out not to be the best solution. It was a proposal, but it was not a solution. The solution is a program with three different components, one for each segment of the hog industry.
I guess I'm saying that I don't know why this is coming in front of committee again. It's a very narrow motion. This is exactly what was proposed to the committee. Now we're being asked to run with it before the committee has had an opportunity to look into this further--at least at this time.
The committee has already unanimously voted in favour of a motion that would seek out the necessary information in order to propose solutions to the SRM difficulties that our beef producers are facing. This is a very important matter, in response to Mr. Valeriote's question earlier. That's why we had those witnesses come in front of committee. That's why we listened to them. That's why I put forward my motion. Absolutely, this is important.
I'm just not convinced that at this early stage in our work this is the solution. The difficulty here is that this motion is worded in such a way--if it comes back in front of the committee--that it's proposed as “the solution”.
Conservative
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I would actually submit that (a) I don't believe this motion should even be considered or should have been considered to be in order in the first place, because it's negating a motion that the committee unanimously passed.
Mr. Lemieux, I don't know if you still have your motion on hand, but we passed the motion basically saying that we need to work with industry to discover what the solutions are, and then we're going to bring a motion forward a week later that says, “Oh, wait a minute, we've thought about it and we didn't need to talk to the industry, because we have the solution.”
So (a) I don't think this is in order, and (b) we have a motion. Once again, we've taken the direction that our committee is moving in, and we've taken a position, and Mr. Bellavance decided he wanted to tweak it a little bit and come up with what he feels is the solution. Now they're saying, well, you don't listen to farmers. No. It wasn't farmers who sat before us as witnesses; it was industry. It was the packing industry that sat before us.
Then, last week—and Mr. Bellavance, I'm not going to mention who was here and who wasn't here—we had the Outstanding Young Farmers here. Everybody took their turn asking them if they thought this was the motion...or at least I took my opportunity to ask them if this was the motion they would recommend. Every one of them said no, it was not what they would recommend.
