Mr. Speaker, I do not know why it is but when I speak the Liberals all seem to want to leave the Chamber. I give them these wonderful renditions of their party's history. I tell them about how they need to go back to their roots and where they have lost their way along the path. They are leaving as I speak. It is a shame. If they sat and listened perhaps we would actually improve the bill. However, I will go on as I hear those doors flipping and flopping in the background.
I would like to talk about the whole idea of mens rea , the mental intent, the idea that farmers can be held responsible for something they did not do of their own intention. In other words, if a farmer's tractor happens to harm either a habitat or a given animal and it was not the farmer's intent to do so but it simply happened in the course of his or her daily activities in order to put bread on the table, pay for the business and continue the family farm, the government over there, the Liberals, would say that the farmer should be held for criminal intent in doing that. It is a perverse form of law that the government would do something like that to farmers.
I cannot think of anyone who does more good for the rest of us than the small percentage of the population that grows our food. These people surely are stewards and lovers of the land. They deal with it on a daily basis more than you or I do, Mr. Speaker. The idea that the Liberals across the way think they know better than the farmers toiling away on their land, that they can tell them what to do and hold them criminally intent because of the way they deal with their land is ridiculous.
I will boil this down very simply. With regard to the bill the Canadian Alliance believes we should be protecting property, particularly private property. We should be protecting jobs. We should be protecting personal freedoms and liberty.
The government on this matter believes in theft, in expropriation, in intrusion, in messing around in the backyards even though they do not want legislators in the bedrooms. The Liberals are totally out of touch with this. It is elitist. It is top down. It is arrogant. It is mentally stunted because they will not even listen to the environmental groups or the businesses that will be affected or the farmers that will be held to account. They refuse to listen to their own backbenchers who sit on the committee. It is a shame.