Mr. Speaker, tonight we are here, as was stated earlier, to talk about an agricultural policy. Actually what we are here talking about is the lack of any sensible agricultural policy on the part of the Liberal government.
Is there a crisis in agriculture in Canada? When we talk about the grains, oilseeds and corn producers and the Prince Edward Island potato producers, there is a darned serious crisis, a crisis that involves the very livelihood and social fabric of many communities in western Canada, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and in fact farmers in every province. Yes, this debate is necessary but it is not about agricultural policy, it is about a real crisis that is happening right now.
I would like to touch for a moment on the history of this crisis because this did not come up just tonight or last week. This came up five to ten years ago. The lack of policy from governments over the past 30 years, no long term strategy for agriculture and no willingness to change and evolve as agriculture needed to evolve and change over time, is what is missing and the reason we are in a crisis today.
In 1997 we had a bill called Bill C-4, the famous Canadian Wheat Board amendments bill. The Canadian Wheat Board was never changed to a voluntary wheat board the way it should have been so that farmers could go ahead and market their own grain and increase their incomes. Those who needed the services of the wheat board could still have availed themselves of it via a voluntary process. We would have had value added as the pasta producers were trying to do. It would not be obstructing the durum producers of southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba who want to form a durum cartel with their North Dakota neighbours.
The failure of this government is very evident in the bills that it has tried to put forward, which have continued the excessive regulation of the agriculture industry and have not freed it up. I will give a couple of examples in a few moments that will show that.
The other bill that really hurt farmers was Bill C-34. What did we get from that debacle and the two years of wasted time we spent on the Estey-Kroeger report bringing up all the good solutions on the rail transportation system and on how the transportation of our grain to the ports had to be a commercial contract based system? We got a whole bunch of regulations with no solution, big debates and disputes between the various entities on moving our grain to port.
We have tried over the course of the last two years to deal with agricultural issues. We have had emergency debates on agriculture income. We can look in Hansard . We have had supply days on agriculture income. We have had an emergency debate on the grain strike in Vancouver. A grain strike could happen again. It happened in Montreal. It hurts producers like the pulse producers who shift containers over.
The pulse industry is one of the bright spots on the prairies in that they are actually making money growing pulse crops. It is another example of what the government is not doing and certainly could be doing. Western farmers and Ontario farmers are producing pulse crops. The government is always talking about research, but it does very little in the way of pulse crop research. There is one researcher in Saskatoon who does a bit in this regard, but there are three full time researchers working on wheat.
The government is working with Monsanto to develop a GMO wheat and will still have wheat at the same value it is today. Wheat is sold right now for below the cost of production. Pulse producers could make a profit on what they produce, but they could use some federal government dollars to match up with their producer dollars to do research. Where is the government on that? It is not providing that matching dollar. It still wants to do research on canola and wheat. Its priorities are all wrong in that area.
I have just talked about the transportation issue briefly. They cannot guarantee their customers overseas in India and other places that they will have product delivered to them on time. That is another suggestion the government could work on. Final offer arbitration is good example that could be used to ensure that the containers are loaded on to the ships and shipped to the customers. The Estey-Kroeger report should have been implemented and it was not. That also hampers our reliability in delivering our products.
The government has let the crisis build and build. We have talked about solutions, but the only solution is to go with what farm groups are saying, that they need $1 billion over and above existing safety net programs. There has to be an immediate cash injection before spring seeding. That means right away. The government has agreed to the emergency debate and it has no choice but to implement an immediate cash injection.
The problem with the AIDA program and the new CFIP is that it leaves out the farmers in crisis: the grains, oilseed, corn and, as of late, soybean producers.
I know my colleagues in the farming business will certainly have heard, but did anyone else hear what happened to commodity prices yesterday? Did they go up or did they go down? We are talking of grain, wheat, canola and the other crops in crisis. The futures market is down on every blasted one of them. Very clearly that is the problem today.
Farmers need to get their crops in the ground. They need to be able to adjust to other crops. However, the problem is that when the government cut out all the subsidies, including the Crow rate, it never replaced them with a decent, predictable long term program that helped all farmers as opposed to just a few. AIDA seemed to help hog farmers, but it did not help farmers who were suffering from the longer term problem of low income over many years.
Let us talk about trade issues for a moment. The government seems intent on irritating the Americans at every turn. Lately North Dakota has seen fit to pass some legislation, or at least present it in the house, partly because of the agreement our government made with the United States two years ago when we were having problems with R-Calf, the cattle business issue that went back and forth in the west in particular. They had a 40 point agreement where they would sit down before trade disputes arose. Before a trade dispute arose, such as the Prince Edward Island potato issue, the government would get together with United States farmers and politicians and prevent trade action.
Now we see trade action happening with Brazil. Is that not an interesting little case? We have political debts being paid to Bombardier and the province of Quebec. In order to get back at Brazil in any sniping little way the governement could, the agriculture minister had to be involved because it involved an importation of beef from Brazil. That importation of beef was stopped because of political interference. It was not stopped because of any other issue. In the next couple of days we will see that ban lifted.
When our NAFTA neighbours, the United States and Mexico, see political interference on trade issues they will not be very happy with the government. I do not have the inside track on what they are telling the government, but I can say that the United States secretary of agriculture is no doubt phoning Ottawa to tell the Prime Minister to life the ban on beef because it is hurting trade between the Americas.
If the intent of the government is to irritate our trade partners, there is no hope for our farmers. It is too bad that the government was not thrown out in the election of November 27 because it has ruined agriculture and I see no solutions coming from over there.
