Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The motion is pretty straightforward. All that really needs to go to the House is that the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food recommend that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food immediately rescind the changes announced to the Canadian family farm options program on April 20, 2007, and restore the provisions of the program as originally announced, and that this motion be made a report to the House.
It's pretty simple, Mr. Chair. In fact, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food was the one who stated last July that “the new government is committed to helping farmers who are under financial stress”. The vehicle they announced to do that was the family farm options program, inclusive of $550 million to be paid out over two years.
The point is that this government brought the program forward to respond to a need that recognized that farmers across Canada have responded to the program by either utilizing it last year or making financial plans to utilize it in the second year.
What the minister has done is alter the rules late into the second year with his announcement on April 20, thus eliminating any producer who would have qualified. The minister has done this without any justification and no economic analysis of why, and the minister has an obligation to produce such justification. It's just absolutely unacceptable to the farmers affected.
Seeing that he hasn't done that, we gave him a question in writing prior to his appearing here the other day. Therefore this motion, as indicated, states that the program should be immediately reinstated.
I will just make two further points.
This is a sample of some of the letters we're getting from very concerned low-income producers. I will quote from this letter, directed to Mr. Strahl and copied to myself and a number of others:
We were encouraged to learn through our accountant that we could probably qualify for the options program, although we understood that the amount would be less than the previous year. We were devastated and extremely angry to learn that you decided to cancel the program for those who had not qualified based on their 2005 tax return. We felt that it was cowardly, underhanded, and sneaky of you to announce this at the end of April, when farmers are generally too busy to drive their tractors to Ottawa to protest your abominable leadership.
We have a lot of letters in a similar vein.
The last point I would make, Mr. Chair, is that the officials who were before this committee the other day indicated that:
In total, the original funding for [the] Options [program] was $550 million to provide farm income, business planning, and skills development support and services. The revised total is [now] $304 million [based on the changes]. The difference of $246 million will be redirected to other agricultural priorities.
Really, Mr. Chair, this is money that the minister, by his announcement, has practically taken out of the pockets of low-income farmers who, with their financial advisers, had planned on using inventory optional adjustments, depreciation, etc.—all legal means. I would submit that it's similar to the case if, in the rest of Canadian society, an individual went out and bought $18,750 of RRSPs and the Minister of Finance decided three months after the fact that it doesn't qualify to reduce your taxable income load now. It's the same principle.
For farmers to be treated with such disrespect is unbelievable, and therein lies the reason for the motion, Mr. Chair.