Mr. Speaker, I respect the individuals the member mentioned. One can always use anecdotal experiences to arrive at conclusions but to do an adequate scientific assessment on a particular issue, one has to look at a statistically significant population of individuals and do a rigorous scientific assessment of those individuals to determine whether the hypothesis is correct. That is the scientific method and that is the way in which rigorous science is done.
Let me quote an international panel of cancer experts who looked at a large population of people. They examined over 70 published studies on this particular question: Do pesticides cause cancer, yes or no? The National Cancer Institute of Canada organized this group of experts and they reached the following conclusion:
Evaluating over 70 published studies, it concluded that contrary to allegations by some activists, it was "not aware of any definitive evidence to suggest that synthetic pesticides contribute significantly to overall cancer mortality”.