Thank you, Chair.
I hope that the wording of this amendment is a middle ground. I don't quite agree with the approach that was taken with the previous amendment, but I do take the point that the current wording of Bill C-234 is too broad. In fact, when I was speaking with legislative drafters, they did confirm that as Bill C-234 is currently written, it could mean any building on a property.
Since the subject nature of this bill deals with agriculture and agriculture-related buildings, I thought it prudent to narrow the scope of the wording to specify that this is going to a structure that is specifically used “for raising or housing livestock or for the growing of crops”.
We did hear a fair amount of testimony from various organizations involved in livestock, but we also received a helpful brief from the Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada. In a previous life, I worked on the construction of a large commercial greenhouse. Many of them still use gas-fired boilers, and we do want to see them transition, but these are systems worth millions of dollars, and it's not something that can happen overnight. I think that if we change this to narrow the scope and if Mr. Barlow is going to have a sunset clause proposed afterwards, we are narrowing the scope, but we're also narrowing the time that this measure would be in effect.
There's not much more to say. I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chair.