Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by my colleague and I am a bit disappointed by his position. He is well aware of the issue, since we talked about it several times at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
When he talks about fearmongering groups, I can tell him that it is also a frightening idea to let the farmers alone bear the burden of all that will happen.
How can the companies wash their hands of all this? How can the government leave all the responsibility for this to the farmers? This is not how I see events unfolding.
It is embarrassing to hear the member talk about the poor children, when groups of Canadian bishops, of American bishops and ecumenical groups are studying the question and are asking for mandatory labelling both in Canada and the United States. If ever there were people concerned about poor children, they are surely the ones.
However, I want to get back to the producers. I have heard it said that farmers producing non genetically modified foods will simply have to find their own market. Because my colleague comes from western Canada, I must say that in Saskatchewan, Mr. Hyden, an organic farmer, is losing customers because his neighbours are growing genetically modified foods. The seeds are blown into his fields or carried there by the birds and the bees, and when he applies for approval of his products, he gets a poor rating at the international level.
What can the member propose as a solution to those organic farmers who want to stay with traditional farming but are surrounded by genetically modified crops and lose their own market because of that? Last fall, in spite of all the problems they had in western Canada, organic farmers kept their market and fared better than the others.