Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to Bill C-34 and to have the opportunity to briefly discuss the state of this country's agricultural sector.
First let me address the matter of Bill C-34. Its basic objectives are fairly admirable. It is supposed to streamline, to clarify, to modernize, to incorporate. These modern day management terminologies are rather appealing as debt and taxes rise and services degenerate.
This bill seeks to combine four separate acts and an agricultural program into one more concise piece of legislation. I am very much in favour of reducing administration costs and bureaucratic entanglements. The reduction of bureaucracy at any level is something that the Reform Party has been strongly advocating ever since the party's inception.
I am also in favour of making this Parliament more democratic. Bill C-34 exemplifies how the Liberals, despite red book promises to allow all MPs a greater role in drafting legislation, are continuing to ram through legislation without proper consultation from Canadians and their elected representatives in this House.
Each and every amendment to Bill C-34 proposed by the Reform Party was turned down by the Liberal dominated agriculture committee. It is my hope that we will have better luck with these amendments now that they are in the House, but I will not hold my breath.
The point I want to make today is that I do not believe the farmers who might be watching the debate are really all that concerned about Bill C-34. The farmers in my riding of Prince George-Peace River are struggling to bring in their crops. It is winter up there now. I was home last weekend and saw that things are disastrous, to say the least.
I spoke with the crop insurance people in Fort St. John which is my hometown. They were telling me that in the B.C. Peace region probably around 25 per cent of the crops on average have been harvested. That would vary in some areas.
Last weekend I travelled to the small farming community of Buick Creek which is north of Fort St. John. The farmers up there were telling me that they have hardly turned a wheel. The land is just a quagmire and they are lucky if they can get a load or two. Obviously, less than 10 per cent has been harvested in that area. Things do not look good.
As well, when I was speaking with the department of agriculture representatives, specifically Bill Greenhalgh of the provincial crop insurance branch, he informed me that only about 21 per cent of this year's crop is covered by crop insurance. That is about 80,000 acres out of roughly 384,000 acres.
I urge the federal minister of agriculture to join with his counterpart in British Columbia and tour the B.C. Peace region. He should see the state that the crop is in himself. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. He should go there to meet with farm groups and talk to the individuals involved.
In consultation with my colleague from the Alberta riding of Peace River I know that things are bad there as well. When it comes to weather, the border between the provinces does not make a difference. Although they are a little more advanced in the amount of crop they have harvested in the Grand Prairie and Peace River regions, there are pockets throughout the Peace River region which have virtually harvested no crop. It will indeed be a very sad Christmas for a lot of farm families in the Peace River country this year.
The farmers were hopeful because of the improvement in grain prices over the last few years and the amount of rainfall they had
this summer. It looked like it was going to be a good crop. However, when the rains continued into the harvest season, the fields turned into quagmires. The farmers could not get their equipment on the land in some areas. Harvest conditions were non-existent. They would be lucky to have one day out of 10 when they could go out in the fields with their combines.
Farmers have paid a horrific price to try to get the little bit of crop off that they have. It will be years before they will see the true cost in damage to equipment and land. I want to re-emphasize that government representatives should be travelling to the Peace River country to see firsthand what the situation is.
The second issue I want to raise on behalf of the farmers of our area is that I wrote to the former Minister of Transport almost a year ago raising the issue of rail shipping costs. There are two port destinations to which Peace region farmers can ship their product by rail, either Vancouver or Prince Rupert.
The port of Prince Rupert is severely underutilized, even though it has facilities superior to the port of Vancouver in many respects. It is ice free 12 months of the year and has a better berthing capacity. That means a ship can be completely loaded at the terminal, whereas in Vancouver because of water depth, a ship can only be partially loaded at one terminal and then it must be moved to another to be topped up. More important, Prince Rupert is a day and a half shorter to grain export markets on the Pacific rim.
Finally, I received a reply last spring from the present Minister of Transport concerning the difference in the cost of rail transport between the port of Prince Rupert and the port of Vancouver. In that letter he stated that the problem of rail rates is a commercial matter between the affected parties, namely the shippers and the two railways and that it is government policy not to intervene in such business decisions.
A month later, following continued protest, the transport minister finally acknowledged the gravity of the situation and initiated the northwest transportation corridor task force. Ironically, this task force was not going to hold any hearings in the Peace River country until the mayor of Dawson Creek and I made our concerns known. Two meetings have now been scheduled for early next month in Fort St. John and Dawson Creek so the farmers in the area can make their concerns known to the northwest transportation corridor task force.
It really comes down to the issue of the difference between the rail rates. I am told that even with some recent changes, it still costs $3.81 more per tonne to ship grain to Prince Rupert than to Vancouver even though the distances are virtually the same. It used to cost $8.08 more because of the switching charges B.C. Rail is charged in Prince George to go on to CN track. I hope that issue will be properly addressed.
In the time I have left, I would like to briefly touch on one other issue, the shortage of rail cars in the Peace River country. Despite the fact that we do not have much crop off, ironically we cannot get enough rail cars to ship the crop that is there. My office spoke with Mr. Mike Burton, an elevator agent in Fort St. John for Cargill, who said that he had orders for 70 cars and could only get 17 the other day.
I would suggest that Peace River farmers have been well accustomed, to use an old farm saying, to sucking the hind teat, when it comes to agricultural services and attention by the government. We really do not believe it is the right way to go and we would like to see the government pay more attention to the Peace River country and our farming needs.