Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time this evening with my colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. I want to thank my colleague, the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster, for allowing us to have this debate and for bringing this motion forward.
I also want to recognize the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food for taking the time to be here and to listen to all the comments that have been made. We hope that he will take that back to his office and make some good out of it.
I would also like to acknowledge that there has been a lot of talk back and forth about the U.S. I think it is important that both sides of the House, as has already been mentioned, thank President Bush, Secretary of Agriculture Johanns and past Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman for their goodwill and their hard work in wanting to ensure that the border stays open and that we do have a true North American market.
This side of the House definitely realizes that the situation that we are in today, with the border not opening up on Monday as we expected, is the result of a special interest group. The R-CALF ranchers are definitely a group that has profited by having the border closed. They have seen record cattle prices because of the fearmongering that they have been able to accomplish.
If we take that special interest group and combine that with a judge who is sympathetic to their needs, we have these injunctions. The first injunction was granted back in 2003. There is now this injunction granted just last week. Unfortunately, there may be further injunctions coming forward because R-CALF supposedly may be bringing forward more lawsuits before that judge.
There has also been a lot of rhetoric surrounding the relationship between Canada and the United States. The one thing that we cannot ignore is that the vote in the senate last week to ensure that the rule never becomes law is a reflection of the relationship between the Canadian government and U.S. politicians. If that vote had been held two weeks ago, we can be assured that it would have carried. We would have seen the rule pass the senate and not be defeated.
The one thing that we have to learn from this whole process is that the opening of the border is unpredictable. We cannot bank on the border opening on a certain date. One of the problems that we have had in the past is that we have always given the industry these false promises that the border was going to open. We should have been planning two years ago that the border might never open. We have to develop a made in Canada solution.
There has also been a lot of talk about the current programs that we have and the moneys that have supposedly gone out to the industry. I want to do a quick recap on that.
In all the programs that have been announced in 2004, the bison, elk, sheep, goat, and other ruminant species have been shut out of any federal dollars. I continue to hear from those producers and from that industry that they need the support as well.
Those industries were dependent upon the U.S. market and they have to go through this adaptation. They need the support of the department and this government to ensure that they can stay on their farms.
There has been a lot of talk about the CAIS program. We talk about it all the time in the agriculture committee. We dealt with it again today. We are still dealing with the delivery of the CAIS program from 2003. We are only talking about 40,000 clients or thereabouts being paid so far out of a total of 138,000. That is not acceptable. People are still waiting for money from 2003. Here we are in 2005.
The deposit in the CAIS program has been bantered about as well. We know that this deposit provides absolutely no benefit to the producer. It is like me going out and buying a tractor and throwing it in a shed never to use it again. It is an investment that does not generate a return to the farm.
We need to ensure that those dollars are available to farmers so that they can do the best they can to enhance their operations, put seed in the ground, pay off some bills, pay off their bank, and make their tax payments.
We have also been talking about the loan loss reserve program which I raised in question period today. That program has been slow in coming. It was announced in September and we are only at the point now where some lenders can use it. In this situation this is unacceptable.
We have not heard any discussion about the farm improvement loan program prior to the budget and it shocked a lot of us to learn that the program was cancelled. One of the reasons for removing the program was that it was not being used very much. As a result of the crisis on the farm and the lack of new loans being handed out in the agriculture industry, there was no need to use the program if no applications were being accepted at banks or credit unions.
It was short-sighted on our part not to maintain that program, especially during this time of crisis and especially when so many young farmers are struggling with huge debt loads. They sometimes needed the bit of extra leverage that was available through the farm improvement loan program.
We must look at reality and the reality is that we cannot wait for the border to open. This agriculture crisis, not just the BSE crisis but the overall crisis in agriculture, is having a tremendous ripple affect. It is affecting all rural communities. It is affecting the health of farm families. We must address the shortcomings right away.
As a result of this being such a huge farm crisis we need to put aside our political differences and work together. As my colleague from Medicine Hat stated earlier, we are more than happy to put aside our political differences and work together to resolve this problem and to make this minority government work so we can address this issue and ensure that we come to some conclusion and lay down a road map that we could use for the upcoming years.
How do we go about structuring some of this support? Producers and farmers across Canada take the greatest pride in the job they do. They do not like looking for handouts. They would rather ensure that the industry works, that the markets provide them with a return for their product, and that they be successful in that manner.
One of the ways we could do that would be to expand our slaughter capacity. There are regional shortfalls. Manitoba, the Maritimes and B.C. do not have enough packing capacity and depend upon other regions to take their animals. We must encourage that as quickly as possible and ensure those investments happen.
We must diversify the marketplace. We must pursue rigorously opening up other markets outside of the United States, whether that be in Europe, Asia, Pacific Rim countries, or Latin America. We must rigorously go out and seek those markets. If the U.S. will not open its border totally to us, then let us present our science to all those other markets in a more effective manner so that we can get two way trade happening with those countries as well.
We have a huge number of cull animals on our hands. The herd size in the beef sector must be reduced, as well as the herd size in the bison industry, the elk industry and the sheep industry. We must look at getting older animals out of the system and expediting that. A lot of farmers are sitting around holding on to those animals. We must get them out so they are not adding to our problems by continuing to produce more offspring.
There is a contingency fund in the budget and we are requesting that this money be used to deal with this crisis. Money will have to flow quickly and go directly to the primary producers. It must be delivered outside of the CAIS program and with the least amount of administrative cost and hassle. We must look at including all ruminants as well as the grain sector in everything that we deal with in the future in this crisis.
