Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague who has explained the process of this bill.
Unfortunately, it mirrors a pattern that we see in every piece of legislation that comes through this very dysfunctional Parliament, in which there are problematic bills. It does not matter who brings the legislation forward: bills are always problematic; there are always faults within them. A group of adults, a group of mature people, a group of people who are here to represent the best interests of the country can sit down at committee and work through these faults and find common ground.
I know that when I was on the agricultural committee when first elected, it was a committee where all parliamentarians tried to put the interests of farmers, sometimes, but not always, ahead of their own talking points.
I am very interested in the failings of this bill. This is a very large bill, covering all manner of things. There are many good elements in it. However, we have heard consistently about problematic issues that needed to be fixed.
In particular, I am very interested in the issue of farmers' privilege, where the government's idea of representing farmers is to take away rights from them and allow the minister to decide whether or not they have those rights. In this process it is very easy for the large corporate seed lobbyists to just call up the minister, have a meeting, take his staff out for drinks and, lo and behold, the privileges that farmers have enjoyed year after year, decade after decade, can be annulled without any process.
What does my hon. colleague think about this part of the bill that is undermining the fundamental rights of farmers, giving these over to the minister and allowing, again, backroom access by corporate lobbyists to influence seed policy.