I want to welcome several people for the debate on intimate partner violence this afternoon: Alison Irons, the mother of Lindsay Wilson, who was killed in a murder-suicide in Bracebridge in April 2013; Dan and Michelle Jennings, parents of Caitlin Jennings, who was murdered in London, Ontario, in July 2023; as well as Emily McIntosh, Janice Jim and Amani Yagoub. Welcome to the House.

I want to thank the member from Timiskaming for the comments today. It’s kind of nice, on this afternoon, to have a conversational debate rather than a head-to-head debate.

I remember the first time I was working at—I had a job in Geraldton. I was driving up Highway 11, and you get to about Barrie and then the farms disappear and it all becomes bush. You keep driving and driving for another—I don’t know—five or six hours, and then somewhere north of Timmins, the land opens up. There’s this huge valley and there’s all this farmland there. It’s the Clay Belt, and it was the first time I had ever learned about the Clay Belt.

You’re obviously a farmer from the Clay Belt. You’ve got a lot of experience there, and you said that climate change is actually impacting the Clay Belt, as well, and that you were able to grow, I think you said, canola for the first time, which you weren’t able to before, but it’s also having an impact on winter wheat. Can you talk about some of the impacts on Clay Belt farming of climate change?

I had no idea that my colleague from Ottawa Centre was such an expert on food waste. It’s been a fascinating conversation. The condo building that I’m living in, we just started composting about five years ago. It’s been very successful. The food program that I volunteer with, they also, you know, get a lot of recycled food and they talk about this food that would otherwise be going to waste. Some of the grocery stores are actually thankful for the food program to take it because otherwise they have to pay a disposal feel on it. So what does happen to food that is not bought from grocery stores, if it’s not repurposed?