They are upset. They are scared. There is one farm close to me that is seventh generation. The original land grants were made in 1784. Why would it be cheaper, or why would the government want less taxes on a transfer if he sells it to me, as a non-family member, as compared with his own children taking it over?
When we look at farm transfers, farming is a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle choice. I am an anomaly. I didn't grow up in a farming household. My dad worked at Sears. He's now losing his pension. For me, it's that tie to the land that is so important, because you're not going to get the typical person who didn't grow up farming to come and jump into a farming operation. That's not going to happen. When we start looking at farm operators, the average age of the Canadian farmer is 52 or 55 or something like that, and if we see a slowdown in farm succession, where are we going to be in 10 years when those farmers want to retire and all of a sudden that guy has to pay double the tax? We're either going to see an outside corporation buy it—we've already seen many international farms buying farms on the Prairies—or we're just going to see farmland abandoned.
Just for interest, there are 167 million acres of farmland in Canada and, according to the last census, every one of those acres generated $646 per year. If the average farm size is 728 acres, that means every one of those farms is generating $470,000 of GDP every year. What happens if we start losing them? What is the plan?
In New Brunswick there are 117,000 acres of vacant farmland. When we apply those numbers to it, that means New Brunswick's GDP is short $75.5 million a year because, somewhere in history, those farms have not gone through succession and that land is now sitting there vacant. How is this good for Canadians? How is this good for our society?
I don't understand.