Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to the parliamentary secretary tell us how we should think on this side of the House.
However, he was right on one count. The bill could have been a great bill for farmers. All the Conservatives would have had to do was accept our amendments, which would have actually helped clean up their legislation. In fact, they had to make an amendment in an area we concentrated on, because they got it wrong. We identified very early in the game that they had it wrong. The minister actually said they would have to change that and brought in a series of amendments. It is unlike them to actually bring them forward like that.
The biggest amendment they brought forward was a six-pager, which was a technical piece, that would support the Department of Agriculture in recouping monies from the advance payments program. It was a rather technical piece, so I will not go into the details, but the way the department described it was that it would be like the student loan program. They wanted to mirror that. Well, people who have student loans know how onerous that program is.
My question for the parliamentary secretary is this: When it comes to the case of farmer's privilege, why did the bill still allow for the minister, on a case-by-case basis, to not allow farmers to save particular seeds? On a case-by-case basis, the minister could actually take that right away. Why was that still allowed to be in the bill, even though we proposed that it be taken out?