Mr. Speaker, here is something I would like the ministers of agriculture, transport and finance to think about before they discontinue the so-called Crow benefit.
In my region the benefit is worth between $22 and $28 per tonne. We grow about one tonne of crop per acre and good land rents between $20 and $30 per acre.
If the benefit disappears and freight costs rise by a like amount, the cash rental value of those lands becomes zero. The financial effect on the region is to further deflate farm land values by several hundred dollars per acre. This equity, which will disappear with the decline and demise of the Crow benefit, is what farmers and their communities have been using as collateral to borrow funds for economic diversity.
The proposal to save some $600 million per year will take billions of dollars worth of value and equity from existing farms and businesses in western Canada and will trigger further bankruptcies and business failures.
How can the government justify that?