Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague has the best interests of the park at heart and I know he has worked hard on this. However, I disagree with him. It is not adios, to use his word, to farming. We are talking about sustainable agriculture.
Let us look at the fact that right now these farms only have a one year lease. If farmers only have a one year lease, how much improvement will they make on their farm to make it more sustainable, even something as easy as tiling for draining? If they make that investment, it then will take a number of years to recoup that investment. We need to look at the fact that they have one-year leases and they have been unable to implement some of the sustainable farming practices that we would come to expect.
I would not think that Friends of the Rouge Watershed would be considered to be an outside agency. These groups have worked really hard. At committee, every one of them said that they were not talking about getting rid of the farms. The amendment I talked about at length says, “also the ongoing presence of agriculture”.
When he says that it cannot happen, that we cannot protect ecological integrity, it can. All we need to do is be creative, look at an amendment like what the NDP has brought forward, and we can solve these problems, not just throw up our hands and walk away from them.