moved:
That this House denounce the government for reducing the general budget of the Department of Agriculture by 19 per cent and milk subsidies by 30 per cent and for converting grain transportation subsidies into direct subsidies to Western farmers, thereby enabling the latter to diversify and enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over farmers in Eastern Canada.
Mr. Speaker, I take great pleasure this morning, as agriculture and agri-food critic, to start the debate on this opposition day on agricultural issues because we in the Bloc Quebecois believe that these matters must get all the attention they deserve.
With the cuts it set in motion, the federal government recently gave the impression that the agricultural sector is of secondary importance.
I would like to thank my colleagues who agreed to speak today in the course of this opposition day on agriculture. They are the hon. members for Joliette, Champlain, Mégantic-Compton-Stanstead, Shefford, Matapédia-Matane, Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup, Lotbinière and Québec-Est.
You will note, Mr. Speaker, that, with the exception of the hon. member for Québec-Est, all of them represent ridings with a high percentage of farm producers and a wide variety of farm types. Therefore, should you take the time to listen carefully to all the speeches, you will be fully versed, by the end of the day, in Canadian agriculture and, especially, in Quebec agriculture.
Accordingly, with the motion we are putting before this House today, which you have just read, we are strongly criticizing the cuts the government is preparing to make on the backs of farmers. In addition to slashing in the agricultural sector, the federal government is wielding an axe there, completely indiscriminately.
I will take the liberty of reading word for word the motion tabled in the House today by the official opposition: "That this House denounce the government for reducing the general budget of the Department of Agriculture by 19 per cent and milk subsidies by 30 per cent"-this is a direct attack against the 12,000 dairy farmers of Quebec-"and for converting grain transportation subsidies into direct subsidies to Western farmers, thereby enabling the latter to diversify and enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over farmers in Eastern Canada"-and, of course, farmers in Quebec.
We denounce not only the cuts, but the Liberal government's lack of long term vision for this sector. I see the Minister of Agriculture across from me. I salute him and invite him to spend the entire day in the House to discover what Quebec MPs think of his recent budget and his vision for agriculture in Quebec and Canada. All he is succeeding in doing is throwing the market off balance with inappropriate compensatory measures.
It looks like a wind of concern is blowing through the Liberal camp. They are trying to target the agricultural sector by waving the spectre of the catastrophes that will befall us when Quebec achieves sovereignty. We will therefore take this opportunity to set the record straight.
Of all the spectres being waved by the federalists, milk quotas are, by far, the one most often hauled out of moth balls to frighten the farming community. Just recently the paper, La Terre de chez nous , and the daily, La Presse , described in length the disasters awaiting farmers in a sovereign Quebec, according to an agronomist.
Also in La Presse , a columnist said that sovereignty is dangerous because, if Quebec voted yes in the referendum, its supply management system would be dashed to pieces.
The Council for Canadian Unity has made milk quotas the cornerstone of its campaign of fear targeting the farming sector. It says that if Quebec separates, it would lose its milk quota for sales to Canada immediately-not tomorrow or the next day but immediately. That hits home harder and is scarier.
Seriously now, is that really the no side's strategy? The conclusion to be drawn from this line of argument from federalists is that they have no idea how the dairy industry in Canada and Quebec works.
What saying that sovereignty would be catastrophic for Quebec's dairy industry shows most of all is that federalists have found no other way of scaring our farmers. The biggest myth going around is that Quebec's industrial milk quota would be cut at least in half-that hits home even more-forcing many dairy farms in Quebec to close. We all know that Quebec producers have 48 per cent of the industrial milk quota while 25 per cent of Canada's population lives in Quebec. Now, several farmers from Quebec, who have gone to the trouble of coming here to listen to us today, are in the gallery facing me.