Mr. Chair, I wish you'd recognize the fact that Mr. Easter is now trying to bully the committee to get his own way. I don't think it's appropriate. We've had very good working relationships at the last few sets of meetings, but all of a sudden, he's playing shenanigans, playing games. Now he thinks he can bully his way to the top, and I'm not going to let him do that.
As I was saying, he's brought forward reports. Mr. Bellavance brought forward a report on SRM products. I think that would be a good motion to look at.
Mr. Atamanenko, you talked about producer cars. Again, this winter we're moving grain with producer cars. It would've been a great motion to bring forward and look at.
But you're saying that now, for farmers who load producer cars...obviously you don't think they have a priority over other issues.
As I said, I'm not prepared to give up my place in line. If they're willing to pull their motions...and I don't think they should be allowed to table them so that they sit there forever and ever. I don't think it's appropriate. In fact, I think we should talk about a timeframe that motions can't sit there before they actually come before this committee and are addressed or tabled...or disappear.
We've seen here that Mr. Easter has bogged down the committee with motions--some of them good, some of them bad--and now he's trying to bully the committee into hearing one of his particular pet interest motions. I don't think that's something we should be entertaining at all. It really is not helpful to the good nature that we've had around the committee table this spring. I'm disappointed that he would think he can do that off the cuff. It's very disappointing to me.
One thing that both Mr. Valeriote and I tried to do this spring was to make sure we did not politicize the committee. We focused on items that were important at committee.
Of course now Mr. Easter--I guess he's sensing the winds of an election and his own defeat--is trying to put through some of his own games, so I'm very disappointed in that.
There is one other point that I'd like to make, Mr. Chair. I sat on the health committee earlier this week, and they were talking about antibiotics in feed. I was very disappointed in how Mr. Easter did not control his own colleagues. When the chicken farmers were there, they did a proper job of explaining how they go about the feed process, why it works, and how they go through checking it and so on. The members of the opposition parties, especially the Liberal Party, proceeded to attack them. It was embarrassing to watch. I was very disappointed to see that.
I don't know what they have against chicken farmers. It sure seemed that they wanted to make the point that they would rather go for the highlight or the spin, rather than actually dig into the facts and realize that the feed our chicken farmers use is actually very safe. The antibiotics they use are actually done in a process and in an order that is actually beneficial to human health.
I went out that night and had some KFC, because I'm confident in our chicken.