Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of the amendments contained in group No. 7.
I have received letters from several grain farmers over the past months with respect to Bill C-66. They have said that at the least this piece of legislation would require that grain moves through the port once it arrives there. They said that would help to some extent. There have been many work stoppages over the years. Grain has arrived at port and one thing or another has stopped it from moving. The farmers have said that legislation would help.
Farmers did not know that part of the legislation would make things much worse, the measure to prevent the use of replacement workers. That could lead to a slower movement of grain and more damage to farmers as a result of having their commodity held up en route to port or as it is being loaded on a ship.
Farmers are torn on this issue. I want to speak for them on it. There is a better solution than the one offered in the legislation. The farmers have told me so and I will speak on behalf of the ones who have contacted me.
Grain farmers have suffered for too long. Some have seen their livelihood for an entire year being snatched away due to poor weather conditions. As well, often their grain has either been left on the farm or in local elevators due to some kind of movement disruption. That has happened too often.
One of the first pieces of legislation I spoke on when I came to Ottawa in 1994 had to do with putting grain handlers at the port of Vancouver back to work. It was back to work legislation. We have seen back to work legislation again and again. When we have government interfering, forcing the system to work through back to work legislation, clearly there are problems in the system which have to be dealt with.
I forget the number but there have been something like 20 stoppages over the years I remember. I remember as a very young boy on the farm getting grain ready to go to market and desperately needing the money from the grain to meet day to day expenses, to buy clothes and food for the family. Then I would hear about a stoppage in the grain handling system. There might have been some problem with the railway. More often than not the grain handlers were on strike at the port. Any one of the many links in the system might have broken down. Who paid the price? The captive shippers, in this case the grain farmers who have no other practical way of getting their commodity to the ships so they can get paid. This has happened again and again.
As I said, one of the first pieces of legislation that I spoke on was to legislate the grain handlers back to work. The problem had not been solved.
Will this piece of legislation help? To some extent it will. At least grain that makes it to the port will be moved through the system and loaded on to ships. That is not enough, not close to enough. It is not only grain farmers who are affected by a system that does not come through again, again and again. It is people with many other commodities who have no other way of getting them to port other than by railway. It is a system that breaks down on them again and again and costs them dearly. The legislation does not fix the system.
What has Reform proposed over the three and a half years we have been here? We have proposed many different solutions to the problem. In my second speech in the House in February 1994 I proposed the use of final offer selection arbitration which my colleague has mentioned in the House as a permanent solution to the problem.
Final offer selection arbitration allows for the bargaining process to take place but absolutely prevents a stoppage in grain movement right from the local elevator to the ship. That is the solution farmers need. That is the solution other captive shippers need. Nothing less than that is good enough, and this legislation provides a lot less. With the negatives it is questionable whether it will make things better or worse. On balance it could well make things worse.
We need this change. The Reform member for Lethbridge put forward a private member's bill respecting a final offer selection arbitration some time back in 1994. That bill was debated in the House and I believe it was votable. Had it passed it would have become legislation. Did we get support from the same government that is now presenting this piece of legislation? Did we get support from the Bloc? Did we get support from anybody for that legislation?
We never got support from anybody in the House but we got support right across western Canada from grain farmers who are fed up with having constant disruptions in grain movement that cost them so dearly when they can ill afford it. They are already at
the mercy of the weather and world prices, world prices being low more often than not due to government interference in the market.
It is not just the American government and the European governments that interfere in the market and do not allow the market to work properly. It is also the Canadian government. Canadian governments-Conservative and Liberal-have been interfering for some time. This has led to depressed prices. Farmers have had to deal with all this and with continual disruptions.
It is time for some real change. It is time we put in place final offer arbitration as a way to ensure that captive shippers get their products loaded on to ships in a timely fashion. This legislation will not do that unless we include these amendments and clearly end disruptions in the handling system once and for all. Farmers deserve no less.
In the red book the government included virtually nothing on agriculture. As an afterthought an addendum was added which included a lot of nice things to help make things better for farmers. It is time the government delivered on at least this one.
It is time not to settle for quarter or half measures. It is time to solve the problem. The government has an opportunity to deal with the problem and to say that it will solve the problem completely. Maybe that is overstating the case but it would certainly help in a dramatic way. That is why I speak in support of Group No. 7 amendments. I encourage the Liberal government to finally do something for grain farmers. They are being held hostage by the grain handling system. Right now, once again this year, grain is not moving.
During the elimination of the Crow benefit, the changes to the Canada Transportation Act and the privatization of CN Rail I called again and again for measures, as did my colleagues, that would put competition into the system. It would have fixed the car allocation process. It would have made the system work.
The government did not heed our call for action. Here is a chance for it to make up for that in some small way. It should support this group of amendments that will finally allow for movement of grain right from the local elevator to the ship without disruption. It is the least that farmers should expect from the government.