Madam Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise in the House and speak about business that affects the people of Canada, particularly people of rural Canada who produce our food.
I am honoured to speak to Bill C-27 in our first round of discussion. As someone representing agricultural interests, whenever a bill comes forward on agriculture, the first thing I ask is what kind of consultation and input has come from agricultural producers. In fact, that was one of the very first questions I asked at the briefing. At that time, I received a rather vague answer, but I was assured there had been consultations.
I phoned a number of the agricultural organizations that I trust and with which I have worked. None of them were aware really of any of the details about Bill C-27 until it was announced. That disturbed me. I believe the support of our agricultural community is vital for a bill like this to pass.
One thing we can all agree on is that food safety and customer confidence will be the number one agricultural issue in the 21st century. We see how changing consumer tastes on a number of matters can affect our ability to produce and how it can affect our markets. When we talk about food safety, we have to look at the complexity of the issue, and it is a good to talk about the role of the CFIA. The other element that is crucial is consumer confidence.
I have a number of concerns about the bill which could potentially undermine consumer confidence, and that would reflect badly on our role as legislatures.
There are some serious questions we have to ask about our willingness to create a bill such as this. To me, it appears to be a very large omnibus bill. There are a lot of devils in the details, as we always say, and issues that will be dealt with by orders in council. I am very concerned about the kind of sweeping powers we might see. We use the term smart regulations. That is a bit of a buzz phrase. Maybe I am a child of Orwell, but whenever I hear a term like smart regulations, it sounds to me like an oxymoron or perhaps something of which I should be very wary. I tend to take a second glance at these. I am worried that in some cases smart regulation is moving us toward dumbing down our regulations to appease our American neighbours.