Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Red Deer gave a great account of the advance payment program in Bill C-18. To be perfectly blunt, I do not think there is much I could quibble with on that particular aspect. The member did a great job at committee in helping us understand how it works, for those of us who have never taken advanced payments, maybe because we do not own farms. He has done it again here in the House, and I want to thank him for that.

It is important. That is a piece of the omnibus bill. As it stood, with a little tweaking, it was a six-page amendment, but it was a technical piece. I get that piece. In fact, the department needed six pages to actually tell us how to technically amend it, but at least it got it right. We could have voted for that, if it had been separated out. However, the government did not do that.

We go back to the issue of UPOV '91, which is really about intellectual property. One of the things we try to do as the opposition is suggest amendments. The amendment should be about making sure that when going to a court of law, there has been an infringement. In other words, it should not have a chill effect, as it is called in class action lawsuits, where a farmer who inadvertently ends up with material in his field ends up in a lawsuit. We wanted to try to stiffen that so that this would not happen to farmers.

Could my friend from Red Deer comment on why we did not want to strengthen that and left that alone? If someone actually tries to take someone else's property, that is wrong, full stop. That is not the issue. The issue is what happens if there is a chill effect, because we have seen that in other instances.

Malcolm Allen

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