Again, Chair, one of the concerns I have here is one of trust. I'm glad to hear that Mr. Easter made the comment...he stepped out and said that he will not support this bill. We needed him to say that in the first vote. We wouldn't have wasted a lot of the committee's time if he would have done that.
What concerns us—and I think this is where Mr. Richards was trying to get to—is he also stood up on a vote in the House on the long-gun registry where he wanted to see it scrapped, and then his leader changed his mind. I'd like assurances from Mr. Easter, if he is actually going to vote against this bill, that he has assurances from his gods above him that the Liberal Party will vote against this bill. Is that lock, stock, and barrel?
The point I'm concerned about here is in the Liberal Party I don't know who makes up their policy. Is it Mr. Easter, when he's sitting here today? Is it Mr. Ignatieff, when he's sitting somewhere else talking to somebody else tomorrow? I really don't know. So how can I trust him based on their past experience on voting? That's a concern I have with what Mr. Easter said.
But the other point I want to make is if he is telling the truth--which I think he probably is, I think he's an honourable person generally--if that's the case, why would we waste more time on it? He says, we're going to vote against it anyway. Obviously, the witnesses he brings forward he's going to zone out anyway. It's not going to have an impact on his decision, on how he's going to vote on this legislation, so why are we wasting the committee's time?
Mr. Bellavance makes a lot of sense. It's time to move on to other business. So why would we extend this? Let's have a vote on this thing today and be done with it. I think we should look at putting a motion back to the House to discontinue with this legislation. I guess that's where I see these things going.
I don't know why we're wasting all this time either, Mr. Bellavance. I agree with you. This is a waste of time. We're wasting farmers' time. We're wasting my time. But in the same breath, we shouldn't have been here anyway. If the Liberals had voted appropriately, if they believed this was a bad piece of legislation when we started, we wouldn't be here having this debate. We would actually be going out and doing progressive work on behalf of farmers and the agriculture industry as a whole.
Again, it doesn't change anything; it just re-emphasizes why this should not get a continuance. We've heard the Bloc now say that they think this should go away. We've also now heard Mr. Easter say that he's going to vote against it and the Liberal Party is going to vote against it.
Where are we at here? This seems so silly. Let's get onto doing some work for farmers for a change instead of playing these political games.