Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to stand in the House during Adjournment Proceedings to follow up on a question I posed to the government last year, on October 16. Some members of the House will recognize this was World Food Day.
It is four months later and there is still no clear answer from the government side to my original question, which was with respect to the development of a national food policy for Canada. As recently as last week, when I had the deputy minister, Mr. Tom Rosser, before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, he was a little vague, but told me that maybe we would see something in the next three to four months.
There were a lot of extensive consultations with Canadians from coast to coast to coast in the development of this food policy. In fact, I can remember that it was one of my more popular town halls in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford. I had a lot of people come out. Not only consumers of food, but many local farmers came to participate in the panel discussions as well as in the individual round tables. From their deliberations, I was able to formulate a report, which I handed to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food with a lot of pride for participating in a process that would eventually lead to the development of this policy.
I fundamentally believe that the food policy is not going to be a very simple undertaking. It will certainly take some time, but I would like, by the end of this evening, to have some kind of clear indication from the parliamentary secretary as to where the government is at, what more needs to be done and whether we can reasonably expect something in this 42nd Parliament.
The New Democrats have had a plan for the development of a national food policy for quite some time now. As the agriculture critic, I have to recognize the work of dignitaries in this party, like Malcolm Allen and Alex Atamanenko, who were previous agriculture critics and led to the development of our plan, “Everybody Eats”. It was our vision for a pan-Canadian food strategy.
We recognize that in a food strategy we need to have a holistic plan. We need to make Canada a leader in the environmentally sustainable production of food. We need to work with industry to make it a part of the conversation, to have farmers at the centre of this conversation. We want something that protects critical watersheds, that promotes best practices and reduces food waste from farm to fork.
We want to promote the welfare of animals, because as farmers know, the welfare of their animals allows their business to succeed and thrive. Farmers who engage in animal husbandry will tell us that the welfare of their animals is always their top concern.
There are a lot of good ideas out there. They have all been collected by the government. It has now had almost two years to go through that vast amount of information, which was the product of a lot of work by Canadians from all around the country.
Therefore, I would like to pose a question for the parliamentary secretary: When can we, as Canadians, as parliamentarians, expect to see the national food policy? Could he inform the House as to a concrete timeline for the development of that?