Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question.
The member is absolutely right about the fear we all have, including most of the farmers I speak with, about using food to produce fuel. In that regard, she used the example of an experiment where too much water would be used or a substantial amount of water would be used in one of these processes. That is a concern.
In terms of a byproduct on the side, the use of manure, there is an engineer just down the road from my office in the city of Windsor who has developed and has patented this process, but he could not deploy it in Canada. We look at that and ask why there were not government resources there. It is phenomenal what this process can do.
We have a large number of greenhouses in Essex County, perhaps the largest coverage on a per capita basis of any place in the world. Most of them are no longer glass houses. They are plastic covered. He developed this process, which he has patented. As the plastic wore out and was no longer functional, the plastic would be thrown into the mix along with the leftover greenery from the greenhouse growth. That would be combined with some enzymes. It would produce heat which would actually heat the greenhouse and produce compost as the end result. Absolutely nothing would be wasted from that greenhouse, including the plastic that was covering it. It would produce that energy and as well, produce compost which could be used to rejuvenate the soil in the greenhouse.
He could not get any coverage for that process in Canada in terms of incentives and ended up having to go to the state of Massachusetts. A very similar process is being used for a huge dairy farm operation there. Several million dollars have been put into the same process, using manure to generate the heat, and again chaff and other leftover product from the fields. It is generating both energy and substantial compost that can be put back into the farm. He is creating that closed circuit. I always say that the key part of any environmental test, sustainability, is that there is a closed circuit. Nothing escapes, everything is used, and it is sustainable on an ongoing permanent basis.
The member is very correct in being concerned about using food at all. This bill does not take into account well enough, we believe, at this point in time, what the realities are in the marketplace. The bill should be sent back to committee.