Mike Sullivan

[Petitions, June 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, residents in my riding have continued to register their objection to the loss of home mail delivery by signing a number of petitions that I am tabling today.

The petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to reject Canada Post's plan for reduced services and to explore other options to update Canada Post's business plan.

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 17th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Berthier—Maskinongé and the member for Welland for the great work they have been doing to keep all of us informed and to keep the farmers in our country on the right track.

Yes, I am very concerned any time power is concentrated in the minister. We have seen it over and over again with the Minister of Citizenship and the minister of human resources, and now we are giving direct power to the Minister of Agriculture.

We in Parliament think there should be proper parliamentary oversight of decisions like that.

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, our concern is that CFIA does not have the resources now to do the job properly, and there is nothing in the budget, nor in the bill, to indicate that CFIA would be given the resources to properly manage and monitor the implementation and the regulations required for the bill.

There are a lot of good things in the bill that we agree with and that we want to see continue, but if CFIA does not have the resources to manage the bill in the future, and the example I gave was on how it does not have the resources now, then there is nothing in the bill that can be done about that.

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I actually have experience making genetically modified seeds the old fashioned way, by cross-pollination. Members may have heard of Funk's G hybrid. There are signs all over southwestern Ontario for Funk's G hybrid. As a youngster, for 90¢ an hour, I ran around pulling the tassels off two of the rows so the other 10 rows would be pollinated by themselves. It was an awful, back-breaking job, but 90¢ an hour was a lot of money in those days. That is what we did to make a grain that was capable of being a feed grain for the following season. It was a great system. I highly recommend farm work to anyone here.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me the extra time to continue to wrap it up.

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, before I was interrupted, my point was that the CFIA does not have the resources to properly police material now and to properly keep things fair and honest in our system. We now have a system in which a bread manufacturer in the United States is allowed to ship frozen product into Canada, then have it labelled as fresh, put it on the store shelves, and the CFIA says that it is okay. What I think is happening is that the CFIA is not paying attention. This is not a fair position to take.

We note that the biggest bread maker in Toronto was recently sold to a Mexican operation. We wonder if this is not the precursor. Instead of making the product in our own city, taking grain from the Prairies and from those farmers, grinding it into flower and baking bread in Toronto, we are going to start making the bread in Mexico, shipping it to Toronto and calling it fresh, even though it was frozen long ago.

That is the concern, but the CFIA does not seem to have the resources to manage even that operation—

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention a little organization called Aidan's Gluten Free, which is in my riding. It uses seeds and grains from all over Canada, and probably from all over North America. They are combined in a way that makes bread that is tasty but has no gluten in it. Aidan sells this product, which is assembled in his little factory, to grocery stores and they sell it to the public because it is fresh. This bread is baked fresh every day in his factory, and it is delicious.

However, the CFIA has allowed the big commercial operators like Sobeys, Loblaws, and Metro to now bake bread in Chicago, freeze it, and ship it to the stores in Toronto. They take the frozen bread, put a best before sticker on it, put it on the shelf, and call it fresh. They leave the bread frozen maybe for weeks, maybe for months.The CFIA apparently thinks that this is an okay practice.

Mr. Speaker, I am not sharing my time, so I was going to continue right until—

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yes, they woke up.

Another issue is raised in this bill, which is the financial ability of CFIA to monitor and enforce the regulations and the legislation that it is being given. I would like to give members an example from my riding of what I believe is a failure of CFIA.

We hear a lot of failures of CFIA in terms of the use of contaminated in meat in Canada. We have heard of some other failures of CFIA—

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, does the member want my notes?

There are individuals who are planting in allotments all over the riding, and they are growing. In fact, they are growing by leaps and bounds. However, this bill might actually get in the way of some of that, particularly if some of the seeds that people are using become more expensive as a result of that—

[Agricultural Growth Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak today about Bill C-18, an act to amend certain acts—there are nine of them apparently—relating to agriculture and agri-food.

I heard someone across yell out the word “constituents”, and I do have a number of constituents. Not very many of them have to do with agriculture and agri-food. However, I am surprised because I do know there are a number of members opposite who represent large rural ridings in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and yet they are not speaking on this bill. Do their constituents not wish their members of Parliament to speak on their behalf?

What is going on here? It seems rather strange. If I represented a number of farmers, which I do not, I would want to speak on their behalf on a bill as important as this one. I am going to say that this bill is important, and there are a number of good measures in this bill that we support. There are some problems with it.

However, before we get into the issues that we do and do not support, I want to say that this past weekend, I attended the grand opening of the Weston farmers market. It is a place where farmers gather in my riding, directly across from my office in fact, to sell, and they have done this for the past 32 years.

This farmers market is probably one of the most successful around. There is no cover. There is no shelter. It is a parking lot in the old town of Weston. A number of farmers descend on it, and they are literally picking the night before. These are farmers from all over southwestern Ontario, who come to the riding with the freshest of produce, the freshest of eggs, butter, fruit, vegetables, flowers, and more. There are bakers, coffee makers, and the whole gamut of people who come to a farmers market. Grandpa Ken, who sells back bacon on a bun every morning is a hit. Obviously he gets his back bacon from a pig farmer somewhere in southern Ontario.

The point is that these farmers are successful because they are able to turn their products into money. That is really what is going on; they are earning cash. However, part of this bill sometimes makes it more difficult for farmers to turn their products into money and to survive. That is one of the reasons we want to examine this bill very carefully.

We would hope that the Conservatives would be willing to support amendments to this bill, so that we can fix the problems we find with it. That is one of the reasons we have this debate, so that we can express what we feel are the problems with this bill, and we can hear from the other side what their arguments might be to suggest that we are reading it wrong and that it means this.

We do not hear any of that from the other side. We hear some rumblings and some mumblings, but not a heck of a lot of articulate debate from that side of the House.

My riding is an urban riding. It is a very poor riding. One of the features of my riding is that food security is a very serious problem. There is an organization called Frontlines, which is run by the Baptist church, and it is spending a lot of its time teaching 10- and 11-year-old boys how to cook for their families because they are the primary caregiver of a family.

Now, that is heartbreaking when we realize that is who is doing all of the cooking. We have a system in this riding where people teach these kids how to cook. They cannot teach them how to have more money to buy better food, but we are trying. We are trying with a number of organizations that have created small market gardens in the riding. There are individuals who—

[Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act, June 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I had the opportunity to ask members opposite questions on this, but they apparently do not want to get up and give us that opportunity.

If I did have the opportunity, I would ask if they were prepared to further amend the bill. The bill is flawed as it is now. It is, in the words of some, the worst implementation in the world of this cluster munitions treaty by any country that has signed it. We think it can be hugely improved, particularly in clause 11. I would ask the government opposite if it would be willing to consider thoughtful, reasoned amendments, including, perhaps, the ability of Canada to refuse, as we did on Iraq, to go to war with some of our partners if it meant being alongside a partner that was using cluster munitions.