Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I take the point that with $246 million available, it would not be possible to fully finance all of the ideas I am putting on the table. I'm not presenting these ideas as some sort of strategy with several components. I'm presenting them more as a laundry list of ideas.
My hope, as I said before, is that one or two or three of these ideas will pique the interest of my colleagues and will cause them to get excited enough about them that they actually choose to change their vote.
While I recognize that there is certainly not enough money.... For example, in terms of rural development and infrastructure, absolutely, telecommunications infrastructure is very expensive, and obviously we couldn't do all we need to do for $246 million. But I think $246 million would go a long way towards getting some of the other ideas I've raised off the ground.
Moving along, another chapter that's in the USDA 2007 Farm Bill has to do with nutrition. It's interesting that, when you actually look at the Farm Bill, you see that a large amount is for the nutrition food stamps program. I'm not suggesting we introduce the same thing in Canada, but I do think that one way we can make agricultural issues more relevant to all Canadians—not just rural Canadians who are on the farm, but all Canadians—is to put thbem in a context that's relevant to them.
Just in reading the newspapers and watching TV, you'll see that there's a heightened interest in nutrition in Canada. If we can link what we're doing in agriculture to improve nutrition to this, it is something that actually paves the way for an appetite for more money, for example. If 33 million Canadians thought there were a program that would directly benefit them and their families by improving nutrition and the general quality of the food they eat, I think they would support it. That's another area we could look at to help make the link better from farm issues to food issues.
I'm going to move right along here, Mr. Chair. My seventh idea is this. We've heard a lot of talk about organic farming. There is a customer demand for organic farming.
Last year I was in British Columbia, in Whistler in a grocery. What was interesting is that whereas In most grocery stores you see the mainstream fruit and vegetable section and then over in the corner maybe there's a smaller organic section, in Whistler there was only one section in the supermarket, and it was organic. I had never seen that before. In that community there was a mainstream supermarket that was exclusively selling organic fruits and vegetables.
It was something I hadn't seen before, but as we all know, the west coast of North America is the birthplace of many of our long-term social trends, so maybe this is something that will be coming soon to a town near me. I can tell you, if it does, and if we get to the point where there is a larger number of consumers who want to buy organic produce, I think that's an opportunity for farmers.
In my own riding, for example, I have some organic farmers. I have one organic dairy farmer currently and I know there is a demand for organic milk. I also know that currently there are seven dairy farmers who are in the midst of the transition process to becoming certified organic, and as most of my colleagues would know, typically that's a three-year process.
A farmer has to basically hire a consultant—this has to be a recognized consultant—to come in to write a plan for them, so that over three years or so they get to the point where, if they do all the things that are prescribed, they actually can become certified organic. There are currently seven dairy farms in my riding, which is a significant number, that are in this process right now.
One of the other ideas I'd like to put forward, for which I hope there is broad support and which might generate a little excitement, would be maybe we should be looking at some sort of program that would financially and otherwise assist mainstream farmers in this transition to organic farming. Maybe there's something we can be doing that we recognize in the long run there are opportunities for. It is in the broader public interest to have viable farms and to keep families on the farm, and if in the future there is going to be growth in the consumer demand for organic agricultural products, then maybe we should be assisting farmers to jump over that threshold to get to a place where they want to be but for cashflow reasons are unable to do it on their own.
Mr. Chair, in Ontario an analogy or a comparison I would use is the vineyards down in the Niagara area, where 20 years ago the vast majority of grapes grown in Ontario were--I don't want to call them low-quality grapes--Concord grapes that were used to make low-value products, and government at that time decided that there were great opportunities in Ontario to actually move into a higher-value product. I only speak of Ontario because that's the example I'm most familiar with. You don't tear your vines out one day and have fresh grapes off new vines the next year. It takes a period of time. But the government spends money on some stuff that doesn't seem to make much sense, and other times you look at a program and think it was a good idea. That was something that has paid off big time in the Niagara Peninsula, not only for the wineries but for tourism and other opportunities it has spawned.
Maybe some sort of transitional program to organic farming is something we could look into. We could investigate and possibly recommend to the government that this would be something that might have a long-term impact of keeping families on the farm, and might even, in the very short term, provide some hope.
I said yesterday that when the Canadian farm family options program was first announced it caused me some discomfort. I had some mixed feelings about it. Rationally I understood why it was being done, but on another level I didn't like it, because it wasn't offering hope. It wasn't offering hope on the farm anyway. With the farmers I have met, both before I was elected and since I have been elected, what never ceases to amaze me is the value proposition that they're prepared to offer consumers, which is that they will invest large amounts of money, they will work from dawn until dusk, and all they want is a basic living out of it. Farmers are resilient, and they are financially resilient, and the fact that like Rocky they are still on their feet 13 rounds into this is a real tribute to Canadian farmers. In our committee, even if we came forward with some ideas that offered some hope to those farmers, and said we are thinking about the future and we have some ideas, the government has money on the table and here are some ideas for things we would like to get going, and if you move forward with these maybe they can benefit from them, maybe that's all some farmers might need to stick it out a little longer and hang in there.
We all agree with the fact that most farmers we talk to want to stay farming. It's the oldest joke. When the farmer wins a million dollars and the lottery people ask what is he going to do, he says he'll just keep farming until it's all gone. Coming up with a program like a transitional program to move into organic may be something that's of value.