Mr. Speaker, there are very profound questions here. Internationally, we see the whole fight of indigenous cultures who have had their traditional medicines for years, and suddenly they are patented. Maybe it is okay to patent something that was used for hundreds of thousands of years that can benefit all of humankind. There is a public good there. The question is whether the original people who created and used those natural resources should not be disenfranchised, in the same way farmers should not be disenfranchised, in the same way the consumer should not be disenfranchised if Monsanto decides that it will start sticking fish genes into tomatoes and does not want the public to know. These are all issues that as human society we need to be deeply involved in.
To take all these elements of an agricultural bill, some of which are very positive and will help our producers, and throw them all together, ram them through, and not have sufficient time to do the review, when we need technical experts and people of scientific and cultural backgrounds who can talk about what will work and what will not, is not what the Canadian public sends us here to do.
We see in this House the idea that debate is always being called stalling and filibustering. Debate is about raising these issues so the people back home who are listening can say, “I understand what's going on. I see that there are questions that need to be answered.” Then they look to us to be able to provide those answers at the end of the day. If we as parliamentarians are not able to do our job, if we are not able to do the due diligence, how then do we go back to the public and say, “Be reassured, the Parliament of Canada did the right thing with this legislation?”