Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk tonight about the Canada food guide and the changes to it.
The government is proposing massive changes to the Canada food guide. However, farmers and producers had not been allowed to have input in it, which seems a little strange. Producers have the science and knowledge, and the government says that science is important, but they were excluded from the process up until just recently.
The government talks about liking to consult. The Liberals consult with everybody. They are always talking about consulting. However, for the food guide, they wanted to exclude the producers, the guys with the science, the guys who know what they are doing. They wanted to exclude those guys and go on ideology instead.
For a government that supports supply management in agreements with the EU, in the TPP and NAFTA, all those products under supply management, it does not want to have the producers it is protecting be part of working on the food guide. It seems a little strange.
What is the apprehension about listening to the producers? What did the Liberals not want to know about the science from the producers, the guys with the knowledge of what they are doing? Why were they afraid of listening to those guys in their hearings? This has recently changed, but for months they stonewalled and did not want to listen to the producers. That is where the science is.
We can talk about the things the Liberals want to change. When they want to make changes to meat protein and lump it in with plant protein, it creates confusion out there. The meat producers know that the protein-to-calorie ratio of meat is really strong when compared to that of common vegetables. With the amount of peanut butter we would have to eat to match what we would get from a meat protein, we would be pretty big if we ate that much peanut butter, compared to the calories and the protein from meat.
Rather than risk confusion for the Canadian consumer, we should keep it simple, keep the meat protein in there, and listen to the producers who have the science and knowledge. Plant protein is great, but meat protein is fantastic.
As we move forward in studying the Canada food guide and developing this program, having the producers, who have the knowledge and the science, speak to it is critical. Now that the Liberals have finally changed their mind and will listen to them, they should take that science-based knowledge and use it in developing the food guide, and not just use ideology. We do not want to see dairy products like cheese labelled with a warning sign. That is wrong.