Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to address my fellow British Columbian, and I appreciate his interest in this file. Certainly I do not speak for the minister, but I will speak to my experience in Okanagan—Coquihalla.
When there were some suggestions made by some people that we were making massive cuts to the Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre, I made a point of inquiring to find out what they were talking about. In fact, they were talking about letting go one administrative position simply because that person was the assistant for a scientist who had retired over a year earlier; the role has not been replaced, so to keep someone on the payroll for that extended amount of time did not make sense.
Unfortunately, the same kind of voices speaking out, saying the government is cutting this or cutting that and is destroying science, seem to overwhelm the opposition. When we actually look at what the government proposes, it is oftentimes in the back office, oftentimes for redundancies, and we want to make sure that our scientists are supported.
Every time I have brought members of Parliament to PARC, they have always been richly rewarded by the experience, by the talent of our scientists. They appreciate the resources they are given, because at the end of the day places like the Okanagan rely so much on agriculture, and with some of the cutting-edge research that we rely on—whether it be on grape growing, viniculture, agriculture, tree fruits—those discoveries save jobs in the future. They make us more efficient and they make us more productive and competitive in this world economy.