Madam Chair, I draw attention to the fact that I am the member for Peterborough, in case some members opposite think that I am the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, which I am not. I am something else. I am not privy to the Minister of Agriculture's office and the discussions that have gone on there recently.
I want to repeat my remark about consultation. I know from the work that I have done in the House that we are a government which consults with the industry.
The member mentioned the bureaucracy. I believe that the House can drive the bureaucracy. I do not believe that the House is under the control of the bureaucracy. The same applies with an effective minister and his political staff. Picture the Department of Agriculture as a pyramid. The minister and a handful of political people are at the top and there are tens of thousands of bureaucrats underneath. We can imagine how difficult it would be to drive it.
The minister's job is to drive the government's agenda. The government's agenda is to keep working at this, to listen as much as it can to the industry, and to produce programs which are as effective as humanly possible, as quickly as possible.