Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that a request for an emergency debate on the mortality of bees might not be something that the House would usually engage itself in, but I want to bring this forward as an emergency debate because Health Canada and others have all noted over the last two years an increasing mortality rate of bees, which is unusually high.
Why is that important to Canadians? It is because one third of our food sources are pollenated by insects, primarily by bees. There is not much greater emergency than not eating. There is a variety of reasons put forward by experts as to why this is happening, but for the last two years it has been happening and it has been a massive kill.
The reason I am asking for an emergency debate now is that this is effectively the last time that we will be able to engage in debate for the next six weeks. Over the next period of time, the farmers will be buying their seeds. They will also be buying pesticides, so if we have a debate in late January, early February, there is not much that Health Canada or the Government of Canada could do because the seedings will be prepared, the pesticides prepared, the farmers will be prepared. Therefore, we will have another crop rotation through 2014, the effect of which is to postpone the ability of the Government of Canada or anyone else for that matter, to do anything about it until 2015.
The cumulative effect of this increased kill rate on bees is quite significant to our food chain, Mr. Speaker, and I would ask you to give serious thought to this being the last opportunity that we in the House have to discuss this issue. I am not proposing solutions. I think this is a complex issue. I think Health Canada at this point is on top of it, but at some point, and I would hope sooner rather than later, we may have to take actions such as the European Union has taken and such as the United States is considering to deal with this issue.
That is the basis for an emergency debate tonight, sir, and I hope you will favourably look upon it.