Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to also offer my congratulations to the member for Foothills for bringing forward Bill C-205 for the House's consideration and debate. I enjoyed working with the member for Foothills when he was previously a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, of which I have now been a member for almost three years, going back into the previous Parliament. Maybe we will be able to invite the member back to the committee, this time as a witness to defend his bill.
I am quite excited about this because in the almost-three years that I have been a member of that committee, I have not yet had the chance to examine any legislation at the committee. It is actually exceedingly rare that the agriculture committee gets to examine legislation, and we may in fact now have two bills headed our way, both Bill C-206 and Bill C-205, so it is going to keep us quite busy in the short term.
The legislation that we have before us, Bill C-205, an act to amend the Health of Animals Act, is essentially centred on the danger that exists from potentially exposing animals on a farm to disease or to a toxic substance. Before I get into the particulars of the bill, it might be helpful just to spend a few moments talking about biosecurity and why it is so important for farms. Therefore, I will talk a bit about the experiences I have personally had here in my riding.
I have had the pleasure of visiting a couple of farms in my riding, and I will identify two of them: Lockwood Farms and Farmer Ben's Eggs. They are both fantastic egg producers in my riding.
Because I have a small flock of chickens myself, one of the strict requirements was that I have no contact with my own chickens for an entire week before I visited those farms because there is a very real danger that I could unwittingly, or through negligence, transfer diseases like avian flu. I also have a flock of ducks. For anyone who manages fowl, there is a real understanding that disease is prevalent and it is quite a danger, so there was that requirement before I even visited the farm. Of course, when I was there, we had to take great care to make sure that our footwear was clean, that we put on disposable booties and wore the gowns and the hairnets, before we actually went into the barn to look at their egg production facility.
When in the barn, we get a sense of why this is necessary. First, avian flu is a very contagious disease and if it were to go through the flock, it would be absolutely devastating. Any farmer whose livelihood depends on animals, whether livestock or poultry, will tell you that their first and primary care is focused on the well-being of their animals. They literally stay up at night wondering about all the dangers that could come, and biosecurity is a huge part of that.
Another experience I had, going back a few years to a previous life, was when I was a tree planter. One of my tree planting contracts was near Merritt at the Douglas Lake Ranch. It is one of the largest working cattle ranches in the interior of British Columbia and their lands are so vast that they actually lease them out to logging companies. They do selective harvesting of their lands and, as a tree planting company, we were brought in to reforest. When I was doing the reforestation, there was a real danger of foot and mouth disease, so before we were allowed entry onto the lands, we had to have our vehicles wiped down, the wheels hosed off and all of our footwear hosed off with cleaning agents to make sure that we were not inadvertently transferring the disease.
All of these examples just help to illustrate the very real concern that exists out there with biosecurity.
Given the fact that international trade is such a huge part of agriculture, we have seen many diseases and pests come from other parts of the world, diseases and pests that are novel to the Canadian environment and pose a very real risk. I have spoken to researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and the number of new diseases and pests entering our borders every year really does keep them up at night. It is an ongoing battle to try to make sure that they're coming up with the best practices and best defences against those diseases.
I also want to highlight the important role that animal rights organizations play. As the member for Foothills correctly noted in his speech, the vast majority of them have the best interests of the animals at heart. Their ultimate goal is to make sure that we have a farming system in place that is treating our animals with respect and making sure that the standards of care are there.
What we face, and I think the member illustrated it very well in his speech, is the balance that we have to have between the public's right to know, the transparency we want to see and the right to protest, and the rights of a farmer to secure his or her property from trespassers, people who may not know how the farming operation works and may not know about the dangers they might be carrying, just simply on the soles of their feet. They could be transporting diseased soil or something in some food they are carrying, and these are all very real dangers for the reasons that I illustrated previously.
That is the balance we are confronting through the legislation we are considering. In Canadian law, when it comes to animal welfare, it is primarily our provinces that have jurisdiction over protecting the welfare of animals. Here in British Columbia, depending on what the case is, we have the B.C. SPCA. They do farm inspections. We also have visits from officials from the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture.
Going to Bill C-205 and what it is doing, for the the next part of my speech, I just want to highlight the provisions that currently exist in the federal statute that is the Health of Animals Act. If we go through the existing act, we can see that there are number of sections within the act that are already seeking to prohibit. For example, people are not allowed to conceal a reportable disease or toxic substance. People are not allowed to keep diseased animals. People are not allowed to bring them to market or to dispose of them improperly, or to let them out. These are all prohibited actions and they come with some pretty severe fines and penalties, because we are essentially trying to prevent those types of actions from occurring.
Where Bill C-205 steps in is that it is going to insert a new section 9.1, which is aiming to prohibit the entry of persons into a building where animals are kept, if by knowingly doing so or if they were reckless in doing so could potentially expose those animals to disease or a toxic substance. This is important. If the ultimate goal here is the welfare of animals, a person may have noble intentions and may want to see if the animals are being taken care of, but by doing so they may in fact be doing more harm than good.
Again, I understand the struggle that is out there, the debate that is going on with the public's right to know, but it has to be balanced against the very real consequences that those actions bring about. As the NDP's critic for agriculture and agri-food, I support the bill. I support the principle behind it. I believe that the bill does merit further study at the committee. That is why I will be looking forward to voting for it.
In closing, I have received correspondence from concerned people from across the country who are worried that the bill might serve as an effective gag against their right to protest. What I would say in reply to that is that if we look at the specific wording of this act, it is talking about a person entering without lawful authority or excuse. There is nothing in the bill to prevent a whistle-blower, like a farm employee, who is already lawfully there and who witnesses something that they believe is wrong or contrary to animal welfare laws, from blowing the whistle and raising the alarm on that.
Perhaps what the bill may serve to do is to have a broader conversation on how we instill that public trust and build that kind of transparency so that people understand what farming is all about and the struggles that farmers go through, and also give farmers a chance to inform the public of how a farm operates and what measures they try to put in place to look after their animals.
I will conclude there. I will just congratulate the member for Foothills again for bringing forward the legislation. I hope it is sent to committee so that we can take a further look at it.