Thank you for being here, Minister. I would have liked to have a copy of your remarks. We had a short debate on this point at one of your previous appearances. I don't want to spend the seven minutes allotted to me deploring this, but I would have liked to have a copy of your statement.
I would like to go back to the budget, in which $500 million was announced for agriculture. That announcement differs from what you promised during the election campaign. You talked about $500 million over four years, whereas the budget now provides for that same amount over five years. In addition, we have learned that, of that $500 million, $190 million is new funding, and the rest will come from the department. I wonder where it will come from. For example, the secret plan for cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency provided for a 5% cut to the operating budget. I hope that's not where the money will be taken from.
You have been talking about hiring 200 new inspectors for a very long time now. It's funny, but the union hasn't confirmed any such hiring for us. We would need to know exactly when those inspectors were hired, what they are doing, where they are and even who they are. We will definitely have an opportunity to ask the Agency people that. In your remarks, you even talked about hiring some 100 persons a year. Over how many years will that be done? How many other individuals do you intend to hire and what exactly will those people do?
Going back to the budget and to that $500 million amount, just before the budget was tabled, you adopted the same attitude as a number of your colleagues. Sometimes I call your government the marketing government. When you arrive in power, you're called the new government, for two years. That became a running gag on Parliament Hill, and you must have stopped going by that name. When you were re-elected, you didn't get a majority, and you called yourselves the stronger government. All that reminds me of a product that appears on a shelf bearing the words “new and improved”. There's marketing underneath that.
The ministers' disclosure of certain budget details in their respective files even before the budget was tabled was designed to make people think that it was going to contain good things. However, we realize that what you had announced and what we found in the budget were two different things.
That's particularly the case of the AgriFlex program. You decided not to include income support measures in it. And yet that's precisely what was requested by Quebec producers, who moreover felt that your budget displayed a disturbing insensitivity to the agricultural community. Those were the words of Christian Lacasse, president of Quebec's Union des producteurs agricoles. You even appropriated the term “agri-flexibility” corresponding to the program put in place by the Canada Federation of Agriculture and encouraged by the Fédération des producteurs de cultures commerciales du Québec and the Grain Farmers of Ontario. However, you adulterated it. In reality, by excluding income support measures, it is no longer the AgriFlex program at all, as sought by agricultural producers.
You're going to tell us that there are risk management measures, in particular the AgriStability program. However, it should never be forgotten that we're facing enormous competition from the Americans, who will be extending their colossal Farm Bill until 2012. It's the same for the Europeans, who heavily subsidized their agricultural industry. Existing programs don't enable us to cope with this situation. We've traded the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization Program for the AgriInvest, AgriStability and other programs. However, a number of producers tell us that we've exchanged five quarters for a dollar. A real AgriFlex program, as requested, could have met the needs of those producers, who don't necessarily live off fluctuations, such as grain growers. However, that is not the case.
You haven't kept your promises in two respects. First, the funding is spread over five years instead of four, in addition to the fact that only $190 million is new funding. Second, you are proposing an AgriFlex program that isn't at all consistent with producers' demands.