I see I got a nod of approval. Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
As much as I can agree with the parliamentary secretary that regulations are meant to augment, supplement, and clarify, because as he's suggested in the past and is suggesting today, legislation shouldn't try to be all things to all people all of the time because it then becomes a book rather than a piece of legislation. Regulations, actually, are meant to enhance and clarify.
In this particular case, what we are attempting to do in the bill is to make sure that something isn't taken away by regulation, not clarified by regulation. The issue is one of a potential withdrawal of something that someone believes they've got under the legislation, rather than a clarification of something under the legislation. The intent of the piece is to say to those....
As everyone who has sat through the testimony of all the witnesses knows, one of the major points of contention in the legislation is about farm-saved seed. This is about saying to folks that we intend to let them keep this—albeit there are some pieces in here that define what that means, and we'll get to those pieces in the legislation. This is about giving comfort to those farmers and saying that we don't intend to lose it to a regulatory process—albeit I'm not suggesting the government has a nefarious sense here. That's not what it's about. But the issue is about telling people in a direct way. It's not an indirect way of saying we're never going to do that by regulation.
The issue is that there are always some who believe they're always nefarious, regardless of who's in power. It's not always going to be the other team that's in power. This team might be in power, and you may actually think we shouldn't have regulatory ability to do some of the things we might do that you may not like. So that's why we think it should be here.
It's that simple. It's not any more convoluted than that.