Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker stated that it is a complex problem chasing a simple solution or a simple problem chasing a complex solution.
It is all of the above. I attended committee on the day that this was debated. Normally I am not on that committee, but because of my friends and constituents who grow tobacco, I chose to be there. I thought I made a very passionate plea to amend the motion to include some of the complexities that I am talking about now.
I asked for some of them to be included in the motion. The opposition majority on that committee voted them down and then voted to make the motion read exactly as it is. It is a very simple motion that pits farmers against farmers and solution against solution.
The member stated some fairly simple solutions for the problem. I agree that there are sometimes very simple solutions to problems. However, he mentioned canola as an alternative crop. We do need some alternative crops, but in the tobacco belt of southern Ontario it is mostly blow sand. It is very sandy soil, so any crop grown there needs to be irrigated.
Thus, there is the cost of irrigation for those producers. As for growing a crop that someone else down the street can grow from rainfall, the cost of production is way too high.
While I am on that, I should mention from an agriculture point of view how even the thought of a carbon tax for agriculture producers has them shaking. For agriculture and rural Canada, the extra costs of production from a carbon tax are going to be just horrendous.
However, let us go back to tobacco instead of talking about what could be wrong with a solution that includes a carbon tax.
It is a complex problem. That was the history of the motion. The motion does need to be addressed, but there is more to it than that. We have tried to add more to it than this. The opposition has simplified it to how the government will solve all problems of all people. We are saying that this is not case. We are saying that the manufacturers need to be a piece of this, the province needs to be piece of this and the tobacco board needs to be a piece of this. I ask for the member's support on that.