Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the whip of the Reform Party I would like to advise the House that pursuant to Standing Order 43(2) our speakers on this motion will be dividing their time with your concurrence.
I am really enthused about the hon. minister's speech this morning. I would like to direct a few remarks to him before I go into the details I want to present to the Liberal government.
I started farming because of farm programs like FCC and MACC. I was guaranteed a low interest rate for 25 years which I really appreciated. It was the only way I could acquire land and continue to farm and later retire as a farmer.
Why did the Liberal government in the 1970s change the farm credit regulations to do away with those programs and allow the banks to take over the financing for young farmers? Also during that period, why did the Liberal government allow interest rates to go to 24 per cent and force thousands and thousands of farmers off their land?
I am so glad to hear the hon. minister is prepared to do some fence mending on those issues. I hope he gets the fences built a lot stronger in the west because they are getting very thin. If something is not done for the farmers there could be a charge by the big western farmers right down here into Ottawa to demand some changes. However, I appreciate his comments and I hope he will take them into account.
I am not going to be quite as critical of the government on the issues of farm problems as my friend in the Bloc was. However I would like to address some of the problems we farmers are facing. I hope the hon. members in the government will take them to heart, look at them and give us some help with them.
My speech is mostly going to be directed toward transportation. I would like to point out some of the problems we are having today. We feel the car shortage on the railway system is not due to something that has happened overnight.
I would like to point out to the government that in a letter dated November 15, 1993 the Thunder Bay Harbour Commission Port Authority warned the Minister of Transport at that time that the rail car shortage problem had been some time in the making and was due in part to the policy of dispersing the rail car fleet into trades and routings outside its original purpose.
In an October submission to the National Transportation Agency, one of Canada's railroads confirmed there was in existence as early as May 1993 an extreme car shortage affecting its ability to supply cars. To be sure the terrible situation we find ourselves in today was not without warning.
What did the railroads do? They chose to chase business in the United States without first making sure they had enough cars to handle the Canadian grain requirements. That makes money for the railways but it certainly left the western agriculture community high and dry.
Under the Western Grain Transportation Act brought in by the previous Liberal government the railways are supposed to be subject to sanctions if they do not meet targets for unloading grain at Canadian ports.
However, this recourse proved useless when the senior grain transportation committee decided not to pursue those sanctions. I wonder why. Who sits on that senior grain transportation committee and whose best interests do they have at stake? Apparently it is not farmers.
I look at the people on that agency: They represent elevator companies, terminal operators, the railways, everybody but farmers. An article in the Western Producer states that elevators shipped the wrong grain to the port of Vancouver just recently. Why? They have all the stats and all the figures on trade at their fingertips. They know what they need. Is the system so inefficient that they cannot even load the proper grain?
Mr. Minister, I hope you look into that because it seems ludicrous. It almost seems as if there is a conspiracy to shut the system down.
William Stinson, chairman and chief executive of Canadian Pacific Ltd. received a $448,000 bonus for losing less money than the previous year. CP is trying to negotiate with two unions right now and is asking for cuts and labour deterrents so they will not go on strike, but this gentleman is given an extra half a million dollars for losing $2 billion. How does he expect to get a settlement with his unions?
It is imperative that the government start to look at these issues and address them. One of these days we are going to have a civil war if this is the system we are going to allow to go on. A million and a half dollars for management and 50 cents an hour for the workers. Is that fair, Mr. Minister?