Mr. Speaker, I listened to the remarks of our colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan with great interest. He addressed an aspect that had not yet been looked at: the cost of mandatory labelling of transgenic foods.
If this is an aspect that is rarely addressed, it is because there is so little information available. I listened to his demonstration. If there is labelling, this will amount to a 6% tax on all food products to cover the costs of monitoring, which is moreover already being done by the agency, according to the information we have currently available, because there are few laboratories.
I would like to ask my colleague whether he has weighted the cost factor against the potential loss of market, for instance in Japan, the European community, Korea, and many other countries requiring mandatory labelling. I think this would lead to a most interesting cost reduction.