Mr. Speaker, as I was saying earlier, imagine the wonderful smell of buttered toast, smothered in honey, wafting through our offices. Obviously, that makes us think that the machine I described is a marvel. However, it is relatively expensive to purchase. A few hundred dollars, but we can pay a price per piece or buy a subscription to get toast at a fraction of the cost of the traditional way. That obviously makes this new machine more attractive, since any honest, hard-working individual will jump at the chance to improve his life for a low price.
That being said, not everyone agrees with this new approach to breakfast and some people refuse to buy the appliance and stick to their traditional methods. However, this innovation becomes quite successful and is sold across the country. This revolutionary device shakes up our morning habits and causes major changes that affect the stakeholders in the traditional bread industry. We have to tell it like it is: our wheat farmers are not compensated for the process to duplicate the real wheat in our fields. Initially, the appliance is not seen as a threat because no one could imagine anything replacing real bread, but the astounding success of the new machine results in lost markets for the wheat farmers. After a high-profile court case, the farmers' legitimate calls for a fair price for their wheat are dismissed. That same wheat remains absolutely necessary in the duplication process created by the innovative company that is now an industrial giant.
That is not the worst of it. The government takes the side of the company in question and, in a supreme act of bad faith, describes the legitimate royalties the farmers are seeking for their wheat as a consumer tax. Our wheat farmers do not have the means to stand up to this powerful and dishonest propaganda and are forced to continue fighting rearguard actions with limited means, hoping to find allies in the public or among other groups in order to reverse the trend.
There you have a story to illustrate the major technological changes we are experiencing—