Well, I think everyone agrees. As I said, there's global agreement that the sustainability and security of our food supplies around the world, globally, are going to depend on biotechnology. They are, whether you throw in the mitigating effects of climate change and weather-related systems or the higher cost of inputs, it's going to take biotechnology to offset a lot of that and actually let farmers continue to do what they do best here in Canada and around the world.
On Bill C-474, you know, if you think with your heart, you think this is a good idea, that it will protect somebody, but I think farmers are best suited to protect themselves. If you think with your head at all, you end up thinking like JoAnne Buth, the Canola Council of Canada president, who said, and I'll quote it, “You wouldn't have canola in Canada if 474 went through”. It would completely drive that innovation right out of the country. It would go to some other jurisdiction.
That would be unfortunate, because canola, as I said, is king and now has supplanted wheat as the crop of choice in western Canada. Love the Wheat Board or hate the Wheat Board, you still grow more canola than wheat. You simply do. Wheat has become a rotational crop.
Even the president of the Manitoba Flax Growers said, “There's a legitimate concern that markets can be affected by the new technology...but at the same time we are concerned about frivolous claims...that...block technology for the people who want it”. Even the flax guys, who faced the hurt out of this.... Now, we were able to redirect the flax and were able to do different things with it, so that the flax was still moving and the price stayed reasonably good. Having said that, the people who lost the most in that dispute over flax were the processors in Europe and the value-added folks. Further down, they needed it as a feedstock and so on.
There's always that ripple, that trickle-down effect. Certainly there are certain parties who would love to put a wall up around Canada and we would only do so much and we would manage our supply so we.... It's very shortsighted. This country was opened and settled by agriculture and it continues to be an agrarian-based society, as are a lot of other countries. No one is an island, not even Australia, when it comes to foodstuffs. We all have to trade.
I love the idea of eating locally, making sure you're backstopping your local people, but there are a lot of cups of coffee sitting around this table. That's really hard to get in Canada. We just don't grow it, so we have to trade wheat or beef with Colombia to bring in the coffee beans. We do different things like that to augment our food supplies.
When you walk around in a store now and look at the amount and the variety of produce that's available to Canadian consumers, it's astounding. It is. And it happens on a daily basis, with boatloads and truckloads and trainloads, and so on. This has put a tremendous amount of strain on CFIA and public health at both the provincial and the federal level to stay on top of all of that, but they're doing an excellent job.
We continue to know that it's going to take science-based solutions to feed the future. We know it's going to take science-based solutions to keep that farm gate solid. As a government, we'll be there for them.