Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to the position of the government on this particular piece of legislation and remain puzzled by its obstinacy against the amendments that my colleagues have brought forward.
What puzzles me is that when we are talking about other issues, for example, child care or support for the family, the line from the Conservatives is always, “We do not want big entities to decide the fate of our families”, yet here they want big government to decide whether or not farmers should or should not have the right to keep their own seeds and share them.
I can remember back in the 1970s when I was working on dialogues on the preservation of agricultural land and of the agricultural economy in Alberta, it was the time of a big scare in India. There was a single strain of rice and the harvest was a disaster.
Therefore, I am wondering about this one-sided mindset of protecting the big corporations that want to sell just one seed, instead of encouraging our farmers to keep their heritage seeds and share those. Why is the government not listening to the farmers on the importance of having diversity in crops?