John Barlow

Mr. Speaker, in his speech, my colleague talked about consultation, predictability and making hard decisions, but this is clearly the same old Liberal government. As part of this bill, for the third time, Liberals would be making extended interswitching just a pilot project. They have not been able to make the hard decisions of doing the right thing or they clearly have not consulted. Why would [more]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell the minister about real life for an Alberta farmer. Roy is having a tough day today. He is having a family meeting trying to figure out how they are going to pay this year's fuel bill. They usually budget about $50,000 for harvest. Last year, it skyrocketed to $130,000. This year, he is telling me it is going to be devastating, as diesel prices have doubled yet again to [more]

Mr. Speaker, we had the Building Canada Act 18 months ago. Now we have the building Canada strong act. Nothing has been built or done in the interim. I cannot wait for when we have the “building Canada very strong act” 18 months from now. The key is repeal. Can the member tell me exactly which regulations and legislation this bill would repeal—

Mr. Speaker, if they understand the problems, why are they not doing anything to solve them? It is all talk and no results for real Canadians, including farmers. Ian, a farmer in Newfoundland, told me that he is paying more than $2.40 a litre in diesel. He said that if it gets higher, we all starve. Kate said that her family farm in Saskatchewan will not be profitable if she has to spend another [more]

Mr. Speaker, I had a call from a dad in Claresholm. He is a small business owner. He was hoping to spend time with his kids this summer, but instead he was working 90 hours a week just to keep food on the table. He is mentally and physically exhausted. He is exhausted because instead of camping with his family in the Foothills, he was at his shop working just to pay the bills. Prime Minister How [more]

That doesn't stop me from asking the minister. What's the point of order here?

Thanks, Minister. I know the answer to the question. The answer is that this is going to stay. You talk about the EU, but this isn't impossible. Your government exempted tariffs on other commodities like airplane parts and cobalt from Russia. For some reason, your government is picking winners and losers and, once again, when it comes to decisions by your government, farmers are losing. You [more]

It is very concerning. You can blame Alto, but this is your project, your government's project, so I don't think you can just put this on Alto. To me, the fact that you do not know how many farms are potentially going to be impacted by this rail means that you have not been part of the consultation or part of the process within your cabinet, and it concerns me that you have not had some [more]

His conscience is getting the best of him. I understand.

I'd like a recorded vote, please. See Minutes of Proceedings (Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5 [])

We've heard all the witness testimony. We're not going to be talking to other witnesses through the summer, as part of this study. I'm sorry, Ms. Chatel. You were the one who, this winter, said that this was so important and that we had to finish this before we rose this spring because of the BRM discussions as part of the FTP meetings. Now you're saying that we should put this off until later [more]

Thank you, Minister. That's an interesting answer, as 54% of the workforce cuts and 75% of the spending cuts in your department are coming from the science and innovation research branch. I think your answer to this committee is a little misleading. My last question is about your conversations around the country. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities voted 98% in opposition to the closures [more]

Okay.

We have agreed to a deadline. We're going to stick to the deadline of June. If they want to miss the deadline and not submit recommendations, I think that's up to them. I don't see any reason why we need to delay this to the fall.

As Mr. Lemire said, we're going to have a motion to reopen the debate on the Alto motion, which we will vote on, and I will request a recorded vote on that motion. Before that, though, I think it's very clear from the questions that were asked today that this is a question of food security and food sovereignty, and I'm actually really quite concerned that the minister, in his—

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Minister. You talked about the importance of food security. We had Jeff Harrison, the chair of the board of the Grain Farmers of Ontario, here last week, and he said that you can't have food affordability if farmers can't afford to farm. One key thing that you could have done as part of your announcement last week was remove the 35% tariff on [more]

Just to rephrase the question then, how much food production will be removed as a result of the Alto high-speed rail? That certainly would impact Canada's food sovereignty and food security. How many acres in yield production will be removed from use as a result of the high-speed rail? Do you know the answer to that?

I'll move to another topic. We had you here a few weeks ago, and we asked you about the closure of the research centres. Again, this certainly relates to food security and food sovereignty. In answer to a question from a colleague, you said that those closures were worthwhile. Do you still believe that the closure of seven experimental farms and research centres is a worthwhile decision?