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House Hansard - 214

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 15, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 214 - Jun/15/23
Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)
  • Jun/15/23 5:46:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate today to talk about this bill and its objective of trying to maintain biosecurity on farms. As the member who was just speaking was talking about, we owe a lot to farmers. They do a lot of hard work. Farming can also be challenging financially, particularly in bad years; even in good years, there is a lot of upfront investment that folks need to make in order to be able to have a successful farm. When disease strikes the livestock population, it can be devastating for farmers, financially and otherwise. It stands to reason that there is a real concern about how to protect the biosecurity of farms. This is a bill we saw in the last Parliament as well. It went to committee. Ultimately, it did not pass. I do not know if it got through the House, but because of an early and untimely election call, it certainly did not get through Parliament. Therefore, here we are debating the same issue again. It is a legitimate goal to want to protect livestock operations from bacteria and other biological threats that would create problems in the livestock population, and this bill talks about that. Any time one is talking about food, many Canadians are going to have an interest. People want to know where their food comes from and how it is produced. There are folks who have expressed concern about this bill being more about trying to keep people off farms for the purpose of not talking about how things are produced, but it seems to me that there ought to be a balance that can be struck between these two legitimate concerns. I think, in the last Parliament, in a similar bill, some of that work was being done at committee; there had been some progress made on striking the right balance. I am optimistic that the right balance can be struck again. This is why it is important for this bill to go to committee, so that work can continue. As I said, this work is not starting from nothing. There are many members who sit around the committee table in this Parliament who were there in the last Parliament, just as my colleague from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford was our critic on that bill in the last Parliament and is now again. I am optimistic that the work can be undertaken in a good way and that they are not starting from scratch, even though it may seem like that on paper, here in this Parliament. I am pleased to rise to put some of those thoughts on the record and express my support once again for this bill going to committee. There, committee members can hear from folks in civil society, both those with experience running farming operations and others who are concerned about some of the, perhaps, unintended consequences of this legislation. I look forward to the conclusions of the committee after it has had an opportunity to do its work.
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