Jean-Paul Marchand

[Supply, April 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, Quebec certainly is not winning by any means in this. For example, with milk definitely we have a certain advantage in Quebec over the west, that is for sure. Now obviously with the change in the GATT, Quebec is going to have to realign itself and develop new markets.

In terms of grain transportation it is obvious that there are millions of tonnes of grain going via Vancouver. It is not because I do not want it to go via Vancouver but it is rather illogical to transport grain to Vancouver ports in order to get to Europe when the line is more directly toward the St. Lawrence seaway. There is a very clear tendency there that seems to want to favour it. I do not know why.

This is in line with the whole subsidy program. Why, for example, are there many tonnes of grain that are subsidized going to Thunder Bay and then back down the line to get to the United States? Grain transportation is subsidized in such a way-

[Supply, April 28th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, there has been an awful lot of talk and a lot of studies. Even the parliamentary secretary for agriculture is involved in one of these studies. However, there has been very little action.

The little action the government has taken has been backward in some respects, forced upon it by the earlier government, for example in the case of GATT. We are dealing with the consequences from GATT. I am not sure or convinced that this agreement was advantageous for farmers in Canada.

I think we broke in, we broke down, we did not negotiate fully or effectively. Now we are caught in a situation in which we are having to give away an agricultural system, the supply management system, which was an excellent system, the world's best system. We are forced to give it away.

The agricultural community which was directly under the supply management program now is forced to readapt very quickly, in six years, for example. This is not an advantage to those farmers. Farming is not like producing dingy bells or post cards. You do not change agriculture from one day to the next. You need long term planning and structural investment. You have to know where you are going and this government does not seem to know where it is going.

[Supply, April 28th, 1994]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the extra time you gave me. I would now like to answer my colleague's question.

Obviously Agriculture Canada has not done everything wrong, I would not go as far as that. There are some things it has done right. Certainly the $500,000 capital gains due to the Minister of Finance is good, there is no doubt about it, and also the encouragement for young people to return during the summer months to work on the farm.

All sorts of things that Agriculture Canada does are worth underlining, there is no doubt about it, but overall no, this government is not going in the right direction for agriculture and it shows. There are a great number of issues that could be brought up.

The loss of the number of family farms is an example. The government is not doing anything to counteract this development. I suspect that Agriculture Canada encourages inefficient producing farms or family farms and is in agreement with the American attitude in respect to agriculture. That is to say it encourages well integrated systems, large farms which will make it such that farmers will no longer be farmers. They will become employees in large farms. Maybe they will make a better salary, who knows, but personally I do not think that is the right direction in respect of the family farm.

I think the government could use more structural moneys to help redress this. One could go on and on about just this one issue. We could encourage large agricultural businesses situated in Saskatoon or Quebec City, but what about the rural areas? How do you encourage a population to occupy its rural area if you do not encourage the family farm?

Agriculture is fundamental for that. The agricultural population is not different from us. It needs all sorts of services such as schools, education, hospitals and so forth.

In losing the farmers in the rural areas and losing all the other services, these rural areas are abandoned and that is a big price to pay for a country like Canada.

[Supply, April 28th, 1994]

I thank all hon. members for their kindness.

I wanted to deal with the inequity of the situation in agriculture because it lies at the heart of the problem, at least from the Quebec viewpoint. There are numerous examples of inequities between Quebec and western Canada.

Grain transportation is a case in point. Grain traffic on the St. Lawrence seaway is constantly being eroded and diverted to west coast ports. Since 1984, the volume of grain moved through the seaway has been halved, dropping from million 12 to 6 million tonnes.

In 1993 the volume of goods shipped through the seaway was 32 million tonnes, a 50 per cent reduction compared with 15 years ago. Glen Stewart, the chairman of the St. Lawrence seaway authority, says the Western Grain Transportation Act encourages producers to ship their grain through Pacific coast ports. That stands to reason since we have more buyers in the far east, but why is it that millions of tonnes of grain shipped to Africa and Europe also move through West coast ports and Panama?

The dice are loaded because westbound grain shipments are subsidized all the way to the Pacific coast whereas subsidies for eastbound grain stop at the lakehead, which is still thousands of kilometres from the Atlantic ocean. Would it not be normal that such subsidies apply a mari usque ad mare, from coast to coast?

Why should western Canada get better treatment than eastern Canada? Right from the beginning, Canadian agricultural policies were developed mainly to meet the needs of western grain producers and worked against the interests of farmers in Quebec. To make up for the deficiencies of their policies and the unfairness of federal transfers to Quebec, we Quebecers have had to develop our own programs adapted to Quebec's realities.

It goes without saying that this situation is very costly for Quebec's taxpayers. The taxes paid by Quebecers for agriculture have mostly benefited western farmers. As I already said, the prairies' share of federal funds rose to 64 percent from 42 per cent, while Quebec's share diminished from 30 per cent to 10 per cent.

Of course the federal government spent money to help the west diversify. In the last five years, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to diversify western agriculture, while the federal government never contributed anything to the diversification of Quebec's agriculture.

There are a vast number of cases in which we can very clearly see that the federal governement is less and less interested in Quebec's agriculture. Maybe this is good for Quebec's producers because they are very well organized. In fact, I believe they will benefit in a big way from sovereignty.

This may be good but let us take the example of UHT milk made in Quebec, a high quality product which held 40 per cent of the market for this kind of product in Puerto Rico, where the Americans tried to block Quebec exports of UHT milk and succeeded. We are not selling any more UHT milk in Puerto Rico. In this case, the federal governement did nothing to protect this $40 million production. However, at the same time in the beer dispute between Ontario and the USA the federal government intervened very rapidly.

I mentioned diversification of agriculture, but there is another example, the railways. In the west we maintain close to 25,000 kilometres of railway lines for the sake of national unity, while we are abandoning thousands of kilometres of lines in the east, particularly in Quebec.

Here is another example. New Brunswick potato growers know that their production is subsidized. Transportation for their potatoes is subsidized at 50 per cent.

No other producers are subsidized at 50 p. 100 for the transportation of their potatoes, so New Brunswick producers can sell their potatoes in Quebec cheaper than Quebec producers.

The same goes for Prince Edward Island, and there are more examples like that one. It is as if the government wants to crush Quebec. Once again poor negotiation strategies at the GATT talks have contributed to scaring Canadian producers. We have the feeling that the federal government does not want to protect farmers, but rather create a very serious instability in quota production. And here we have that crisis in the Ontario chicken market where production is being considerably increased, jeopardizing all quota production in Quebec.

I will conclude with these very brief words. I am convinced that Quebec's farmers will be the first to benefit from Quebec's sovereignty, because when Quebec recovers the money that it is paying to the west to subsidize agriculture, that money will go directly to the regions and toward social and economic infrastructures, schools, education and services. That money will reinforce Quebec's regions, promote agriculture and even enlist Quebec into a democratization process, which is what we wish for everybody.

[Supply, April 28th, 1994]

I need five minutes, Mr. Speaker.

[Supply, April 28th, 1994]

moved:

That this House denounce the government's lack of action in the agricultural sector, which is currently facing the most significant changes in thirty years.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from Hochelaga-Maisonneuve for seconding this motion. I am pleased to rise in this House for this motion:

That this House denounce the government's lack of action in the agricultural sector, which is currently facing the most significant changes in thirty years.

I also ask all members of all parties present here to do the same in condemning the government's inaction on agriculture. A self-respecting society is one that recognizes the importance of its agriculture. A country must first of all ensure that its citizens have good food, hence the importance of stimulating this crucial sector of our economy. Subject to the whims of nature and buffeted by political decisions made here and elsewhere, agriculture requires heavy investment, diversified technical expertise and constant support from the government.

We cannot overemphasize that. Agriculture is a very important industry in Canada. Agri-food accounts for nearly 8 per cent of the gross domestic product and almost 2 million jobs, 15 per cent of all employment in Canada. It produces some $64 billion of goods a year. Food processing industries alone gener-

ate $38 billion, which is more than the automobile industry in Canada, which generates about $30 billion.

In fact, every dollar of agricultural production generates nearly $3 in economic benefits.

Agriculture is, therefore, extremely important to Canada and to Quebec. It plays a major role in our economy, serves as the basis of our society and is an important component of our national identity.

The 38,000 farms and 1,200 processing plants which make up the agri-food industry inject roughly $3 billion into the economy in the form of inputs, services and salaries. The industry generates approximately 400,000 jobs, or 11 per cent of the overall total, and accounts for $11 billion in shipments in the manufacturing sector in Quebec.

This is nearly three times the shipments of the pulp and paper sector. In fact, the agricultural and agri-food sector in Quebec is much larger than the province's pulp and paper industry or even the automobile industry.

Is it not time for our politicians and governments to pay more serious attention to agriculture and to stop neglecting this sector which provides a source of jobs and economic wealth?

What could account for this laxness and lack of action on the part of the government? Because there is no question that farmers are currently facing serious problems. With the upheavals resulting from the GATT and the NAFTA, the agricultural sector has undergone over the past few years some of the biggest changes in 30 years.

No one denies that the GATT and the NAFTA have changed the rules of the game in agriculture and it is hard to argue that in the case of these agreements, the federal government was truly successful in defending the interests of Canadian farmers.

The Canadian government lost out on GATT. First, because it failed to maintain support for article XI and was unable to cobble together a coalition of countries to defend its position and ensure that article XI would be maintained. Not only did the federal government fail to defend article XI of the GATT, which provides for a highly equitable system for farmers and consumers, it failed as well to gain a reasonable period of time for farmers affected by article XI to adapt to changes in these sectors.

The agri-food industry needs a reasonable period of time to make the transition to a competitive world. However, the government failed to win the industry enough time to make a smooth transition to the new system.

By signing the GATT Agreement, the federal government is subjecting the farmers of Quebec and Canada to time frames and terms of change imposed from the outside, by their very competitors.

In fact, the government's lack of action in the agricultural sector has been obvious since the GATT Agreement was signed, and in its trade negotiations with the United States in particular.

Not only did the federal government lose the battle for article XI at GATT and give the farmers very little time to adjust, but when it signed the GATT agreements on December 15 last, it did not make sure our many trade disputes with our main trading partner, the US, were settled.

Canada has since had to negotiate under pressure the settlement of a large number of trade disputes in the agricultural sector. Naturally, the United States has managed to drag Canada into global negotiations of all issues pertaining to agriculture instead of negotiating issues on the merits of each case.

In so doing, Canada had once again put itself in a position of incredible weakness. The federal government's strategy is one of damage control, a mainly defensive strategy. Our negotiators keep complaining that the US is acting in bad faith.

Canada's position of inaction and passivity is also exemplified by the fact it has accepted to negotiate a cap on Canadian durum wheat exports to the United States.

Given that Canada is doing nothing wrong under NAFTA, why allow to be penalized with respect to durum wheat exports when we know that the problems are on the American side?

There is a very long list of cases resulting from agreements signed at GATT and from NAFTA in various agricultural areas across the country which show how weak and soft this government's administration of agriculture is. But we will have the opportunity to discuss this in greater detail later on.

Canadian agriculture is faced with a serious problem, and the government has not done anything to deal with it: that is the considerable decline in the number of Canadian farms.

In Canada in the last 20 years the number of farms has fallen by nearly 25 per cent or almost one-fourth. We lost close to 100,000 farms. This means that 170,000 men and women who used to farm no longer earn a living as farmers. Even among those who still farm, almost 40 per cent, and in some sectors over 50 per cent, need a regular job elsewhere to survive as farmers.

In other words, in Canada not only is the farming population diminishing but it cannot even earn a decent living from farming alone. Rural people need our support; rural communities are in decline but everything we say on this subject seems to fall on deaf ears. So far the government has not come up with any proposal to improve rural communities and the fate of family farms.

Our farmers are among the most sophisticated in the world in several areas. Despite farmers' meagre income and reduced numbers, average productivity has grown by 2.4 per cent a year since 1981, which puts them in first place in Canada, far ahead

of the manufacturing sector with a growth rate of only 1 per cent. The excellent performance of farmers must be pointed out.

Canada comes first in the world for its capacity to feed its citizens at the lowest cost. How would you like to live in London, England, and spend 24 per cent of your salary on food in Tokyo and spend 33 per cent or a third of your income to feed your family, when Canadian consumers only spend 13 per cent of their income on premium quality and surprisingly varied food products? In spite of its problems and the lack of government support, the agricultural sector does its job well.

We are losing our farmers at an alarming rate. Our countryside is emptying and unemployment is going up. In addition, farmers are getting older: 42 per cent of them are over 55 and they are hard to replace because farming requires an enormous investment. Return on investment is low and working conditions are hard and totally different from those experienced by other workers in this country.

Who among us would be willing to start a business, invest half a million and, in return, have to work 80 hours a week, as is sometimes the case, without any vacation and for a salary which only represents 80 per cent of the average income of the rest of Canadians? The problem is not that there are no young people willing to take over, it is that the current policy is conducive to the dismantling of family farms.

Right now a person who wants to transfer his farm to his child must make great sacrifices. That person must be prepared to accept a substantial reduction of the value of his farm, often on the order of 50 per cent. In other words, it is the person who worked hard for over 40 years, reinvesting all his earnings in the farm to improve it and make it more efficient and profitable, and who always deprived himself of all those little treats which ordinary citizens take for granted-vacations, free evenings, sleeping in, etc.-who must, when the time to retire comes, sacrifice his pension fund to allow his offspring to take over the family operation. Farmers should not have to subsidize the new generation taking over. If we want an abundant and steady supply of food items, the government must take its responsibilities and initiate a farm transfer program. When will the government do that?

The loss of a farm is a tragic event which accelerates the deterioration of rural zones. We must put a stop to this terrible pattern. We must do something to keep rural populations from constantly decreasing. A healthy rural community is essential to the well-being of our society. Losing a farm often means losing a concession, a road, a post office, or a store. It can also lead to the deterioration of our rural communities and massive loss in investments, knowledge, money, training, expertise, research and subsidies. Our rural communities are full of dynamic and intelligent people who deserve better than what the government is proposing. The time has come for our distinguished colleagues opposite to introduce a rural policy that includes farm transfers.

Besides worrying about who will take over from them, farmers are concerned about their farm income which, as was mentioned earlier, does not get them very far. How many of us would be ready to spend our evenings, our weekends and our holidays holding down a second job, because our boss does not pay us a decent salary? In 1992-93, government subsidies accounted for 42 per cent of the total net income of farmers. This represents a significant decrease, since direct federal subsidies dropped by $113 million in 1993. Things are getting better, slowly but surely. However, these figures clearly indicate that the government contribution is crucial to the survival of our agricultural industry. Farmers need some support from the government.

The Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food has a budget of some $3 billion, which represents less than 2 per cent of the federal government budget. This is not a huge amount of money when you consider the importance of this sector. Unfortunately, the money is not always well spent. Take for instance, agricultural research. In 1992-93, $300 million of taxpayers money were spent in this area, which provides 3,000 jobs. At first glance, this seems like a good investment. However, the money may not have been spent efficiently.

The Auditor General said: "The Department does not have in place a system to monitor the use of the technologies it has developed and transferred, with the exception of tracking the usage of new seed varieties. Without an effective monitoring system, it is not possible to determine how successful the Department has been in improving the adoption of technology by Canadian producers and processors". Since 1986, the department has known that until a responsibility framework has been defined and implemented by means of fiscal systems and performance evaluation mechanisms, it will be unable to highlight effectively the connection between resources and anticipated results on the one hand, and expenditures and actual results on the other hand.

Wasted money, ineffective research, much could be said on the gathering of market information and the gathering and compilation of statistical reports. It is incredible how Agriculture Canada fails to meet farmers' needs. Information does not always include conclusions, forecasts and data on market opportunities, and I quote from the Auditor General: "Dissemination of market information/intelligence is too slow and fails to meet the industry's needs for timeliness".

Although rather small, Agriculture Canada's budget is not managed effectively. The system has several deficiencies and it is about time we do something about it. In 1994, there will be a thorough review of the department's programs as a result of the signing of the GATT and NAFTA agreements.

In the past, these programs were not well controlled. Again I quote the Auditor General: "Some key aspects of the agreements, such as objectives, responsibilities, cost sharing and accountability, are not clearly defined".

So much money and effort has been spent to provide a service that does not meet the producers' needs. There is waste also in the duplication of programs, be it farm credit, food inspection, income support, market development or marketing. These duplications entail costs for the taxpayers, for such things as staff, services or office space. The respective tasks of the federal government and the provinces in trade exploration are poorly defined. As for the information gathered by various departments, when it is passed on to farmers, it is often too late for them to take advantage of it.

There has been progress, of course, but there is still much duplication between the federal and provincial levels, not only in programs but also in data, as we can see in this blatant example. According to Agriculture Canada data on hog exports, the figure for 1992 was 72,000 for Eastern Canada; but according to Statistics Canada, the figure for the same year and the same region was 125,000, that is twice as much. This is at the very least very bad data compiling, and it is very embarrassing to see such nonsense.

The Chair is indicating that I have one minute left, but a minute is not enough. It is unacceptable, all the more so since I was getting to the core of the subject.

Beyond these many difficulties for farmers, the waste and the many administrative duplications, there is something even worse in the agricultural sector. There is a very serious inequity problem in Canada between the west and Quebec, an inequity that shows up in many ways and that has been going on for a long time. There are numerous instances: milk, research, rural diversification, transportation and GATT. For example-and to sum up quickly since I do not have time to extrapolate-since 1980, the federal assistance share of the prairie provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, has grown from 42 per cent to 64 per cent of the federal budget, whereas financial assistance for Quebec has decreased from 30 per cent to 10 per cent.

[Supply, April 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this is a subject that I care deeply about. The rights of francophones outside Quebec are very much affected by the Official Languages Act and this law-

Official bilingualism in Canada is a complete failure. There is no doubt about the fact that it is a complete failure. The Reform Party talks about costs in dollars and cents but does not refer to the human costs of the failure of official bilingualism in Canada.

There are some MPs who talk about rights, especially anglophones in Quebec talk about their fundamental rights. If there is a community in Canada that has never had their rights respected, it is the francophones outside Quebec. Their rights were denied in spite of guarantees in the Constitution. Those rights were abolished illegally by every single province in Canada, every single one, right after Confederation. It was just Quebec that respected its English speaking minority. Every other province in Canada, every single province abolished French language rights in those provinces.

[Bst Growth Hormone, April 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Last week, the Standing Committee on Agriculture unanimously requested that the government impose a one-year moratorium on the sale of the BST growth hormone. This moratorium reflects the wishes of all the farming organisations and consumer associations in Canada.

Is the Prime Minister ready to follow through with the committee's unanimous recommendation and take the necessary steps for the government to impose a one-year moratorium on BST?

[Budget Implementation Act, 1994, April 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, Bill-17 now being debated is an omnibus measure. It contains some good provisions of which we would approve, as well as

some harmless ones. However, this bill primarily targets the unemployed.

To decrease the budget allocated to unemployment, the bill proposes a reduction in benefits and an extension of the number of weeks of insurable employment required for benefit entitlement. This certainly represents the biggest part of the budget. This year, the cuts will total $750 million, next year, $2.5 billion, and the following year, another $2.5 billion, for a total of $5.5 billion taken from unemployed Canadians. On top of that, another $2 billion in cuts will be made to transfers to the poorest provinces, bringing the total to $7.5 billion. This was the crux the budget tabled last February, a budget which is totally ineffective given the present debt and unemployment levels in Canada. Not only is it ineffective or useless, it is also totally crazy, because we have a government that, just like the previous speaker, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, is crazy to pretend that they are acting, when in fact they are doing absolutely nothing to deal with the debt and the unemployment situation. Not only are they refusing to do anything positive, but they are going after the unemployed, the disadvantaged, the poor, the weak, the women, the elderly, and that is crazy.

That goes to show the evil side of the current Liberal government that picks on the weak in our society. It clearly shows the total lack of imagination of the government when it comes to measures that could be introduced to straighten the situation our country is in. The government has got no backbone. There are a lot of concrete, fair and equitable measures it could introduce, but does not, because it does not have the guts to act.

Why pick on the poor and the unemployed like the government does in this budget, when we could ask healthy Canadian corporations to pay their fair share of taxes? Several thousand corporations have managed to stay healthy these last few years. And when I say several thousand, I refer to the 90,000 corporations that have paid no taxes at all in Canada over the past few years.

There are over 200 millionaires who paid less than $100 in taxes. These corporations and these individuals should at least pay their fair share, especially when the country is in the middle of a serious crisis, so serious in fact that it is attracting the attention of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF is about to intervene because the debt in Canada is getting out of control and the government is ineffective. In fact, the money markets have reacted very badly to this awful and sick budget. There is a whole series of concrete, fair and equitable measures that could but will not be introduced.

Let me give you other examples of how to take the fat out of government operations, and God knows there is a lot of fat to take out and the government is not doing anything about it. Duplication of federal and provincial services, what is usually called overlap, costs us an incredible amount of money. In Quebec alone, it is estimated that such duplication costs $1 billion because the province of Quebec is delivering the exact same services as the federal government. Not only is it an awful waste of money, it creates more problems. It delays the implementation of major programs.

Take, for instance, manpower training, an area where an estimated $250 million will be wasted. Not only are we wasting this money, we are not providing any training.

In Quebec, 70,000 jobs are available but people are not qualified enough to take them. Why? Because the Canadian government lacks efficiency and has no backbone. They do not want to move although the solutions are there; they prefer to take it out on the poor, the unemployed and the destitute. This is immoral and crazy. I could never be part of that Liberal government. I would be too ashamed to agree quietly to such proposals.

This government is not even liberal. It has inherited the Conservatives' spirit: it helps the rich get richer supposedly because the rich will create jobs. This very old conservative way of thinking has no basis whatsoever. I have nothing personally against the rich but, in a society like ours, I feel that corporations and wealthy citizens must pay their fair share like everybody else. The poor and the destitute should not be asked to pay for the government's mistakes or for the fact that Canadian corporations are not taxed enough.

This is a conservative way of thinking which borders on fascism, since fascism tends to widen the gap between the rich and the poor and creates a very unfair situation like the one we have in Canada today. That is what we see today: a lousy government which merely introduce bills on the back of the poor, the destitute and the unemployed, asking them to pay more, while the rich and the family trusts are well protected.

Here is another example. The Minister of Finance has a family trust. Apparently, it is worth $40 million. Others have family trusts too. Family trusts in Canada are said to hold $80 billion at least and maybe twice as much. This is money that is not taxed, that the government does not want to tax.

This government is crazy, because it is ignoring the Auditor General's recommendations. He said in his recent report that in the last three years, $5 billion was wasted by the federal government. We do not hear about it, but the government is going to take almost $5 billion from the pockets of the unemployed. It is forcing unemployed people onto welfare, putting more pressure on the provinces. It turns the unemployed into welfare recipients and it pretends that it is an aggressive measure. The government says that it wants us to move ahead with confidence, but I call that the Shawinigan Waltz: two steps forward, one step back, change direction, three steps back, one step forward. The government tries to solve the unemployment problem with an infrastructure program that will create temporary jobs for men, but it forgets about women and young people. Moreover, this make-work project will be implemented just after the government raised the UI premium rate from $3 to

$3.07. The finance minister himself said that cancelling this increase would create 40,000 jobs.

In conclusion, I will tell you that the Shawinigan Waltz dancers are having a ball. The government claims that it wants to create jobs, but it turns around and does all it can to keep that from happening or it implements very temporary, quite ineffective measures. I say no to Bill C-17. It must not pass.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, 1994, April 12th, 1994]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You are quite right and I applaud your great wisdom! I was coming to that. I was going to make the connection between these eminent individuals who live in the riding of Québec-Est and stress with great emphasis how important it is not to change the electoral map

without thinking about it for a while. As we well know, it could have disastrous effects.

In the past, it had disastrous effects and because of changes in the electoral map, people had to get used to a new riding. As we know, it takes years to build a riding such as Québec-Est.

I do not disagree with the planned electoral boundaries readjustment since in my case, Loretteville would be added to my riding, and I welcome this change.

It is obvious that reviewing electoral boundaries takes much longer than 12 months; it takes at least two years. And it requires a lot of serious thinking. We know that the only reason why the Reform Party is putting forward this motion to conduct this review in 12 months is because it wants to take advantage of these changes as soon as possible. Twelve months. In the next election, they could even-As we know, they hope to win more seats.

At any rate, I submit that it takes a minimum of two years to review any changes in the electoral boundaries and that it would give the Reform Party a bit more time to refine its parliamentary strategies so that in two years, when those changes are made, it might actually win more seats. As it stands today, should an election be called, it could lose some of its most important members.

In conclusion, I would say that this bill is very important and that we need at least 24 months to make sure that the readjustment process is fair and equitable. I thank you for your attention.