Mr. Speaker, I did not have a list of speakers so I have been rising pretty regularly. I finally made it and I appreciate your indulgence.
It is always a pleasure to rise in this House and speak on the issues. Today it is the World Trade Organization bill. It is a pleasure as a farmer and now as a politician to address some of these problems.
I have heard so much today about trading with different partners. I would like to remind some of the hon. members in this House that when we talk about trade with the United States we have a trade surplus of roughly $35 billion right now as far as goods are concerned. We can imagine increasing our trade with the U.S. but I think we will also have to be realistic and realize that we import more from the U.S. at that time.
The problem as I see it is that we lose this huge trade surplus with the U.S., with negative trade balances with a lot of other countries that could really afford to pay for more products that we have to sell. Japan has a $2 billion trade surplus with us. Germany has the same amount, more or less. The British Isles have over a $2 billion trade surplus. Even Mexico has a $2 billion trade surplus with us.
When we look at those points there has to be something wrong that we cannot penetrate these markets. I have a big feeling that some of it goes back to the inefficiencies of our manufacturing and exporting companies. We have heard over the last couple of weeks in testimony before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food that we could probably donate raw products that our farmers produce to the manufacturing companies and they still would not be able to compete. It does not really seem that the problem of competition is in the primary producers' field.
Therefore I have to address one of the big problems that I see and that is in the transportation policy. If members watched the CBC last night they would have seen the CBC addressing the issue of backtracking grain from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg and into the U.S. We have heard so much that this Liberal government is trying to correct some of the problems that are there. I point out that the western grain transportation policy was passed by the previous Liberal government. It had a very nice provision in it where non-performance could be thrown against transportation companies like the railways and they could be charged if they failed to deliver the products that were guaranteeing under the Western Grain Transportation Act.
Backtracking is simply a breaking of that agreement. It is disrupting the transportation system. It is making it inefficient. It is not allowing us to compete with other countries. It is also putting an extra tax burden on our taxpayers. The one backtracking issue is costing taxpayers today anywhere from $15 million to $40 million a year. We cannot afford that in this country with the debt load we have.
We also have to realize that the railways probably are in a pinch in some areas. When we look at the over taxation on fuel compared with the United States and some other countries, if we look at the extra taxes that our corporations are paying compared with the Americans, they also are in a bind and are trying to somehow make ends meet.
Some other problems are in the management of the crown corporations. When we see a management person getting $300,000 as just a little benefit of interest free money, this is added into the cost of shipping our products. Those are issues that we have to address.
We say we need more value added. This has been the theme that I have heard on the farm for the last 10 years now. We need more value added but in the next breath we hear that we have lost 100 food processing plants and abattoirs.
Why has this happened? It has happened very simply because we were not competitive in the world's finished products. We are very competitive in raw products. However when it comes to the processing end and we see markups of 200 per cent from the time it leaves the farm gate until the time it hits the retailer, this is not efficiency.
These are things that have to be addressed before we will become competitive in the World Trade Organization. It makes one wonder sometimes why we would stress the point to become more efficient always at the primary producer to produce more. If we look back at statistics we see that we have increased production in grains and oilseeds. We have increased production in all other products far ahead of the efficiencies that have been built into our manufacturing plants.
We have to start realizing that something has to happen because if we are going to compete, we have to be competitive. It is imperative that the western grain transportation subsidies be revamped. Somehow under GATT it is going to be forced on us and the sooner we do it the better off we will be.
During the election the Reform Party promoted very strongly its plan of a trade distortion program that would take over the transportation subsidies. It seems to me that maybe that is the direction we will have to go to make our transportation system more efficient.
If I look at what is happening under the World Trade Organization rules and subsidies today, it means that we will be shipping a fraction of our grain under these subsidies and still be qualified as green. All of a sudden one day in the middle of a month we will find out that we have shipped an amount that we were qualified to ship under these subsidies and we will have a totally different freight rate.
This is going to cause a lot of stress in marketing especially when farmers are realizing that products like canola have a very small quantity allocated to them under this grain subsidies program because the quantities have been set according to the production that we had in the 1985 to 1990 period.
This means that canola production increased drastically from 1990 to 1993. Our limits on subsidized transportation on canola will be very small so that the producers who may be selling into that market in the first month will qualify for the subsidized freight and then the rest of the canola production will have to go under full freight rate costs.
This will also pertain to wheat and I can see this being very disruptive and argued among farmers trying to push their product on to the market, trying to get a little advantage, get a little better price, and it is going to create a lot of hardship and a lot of heard feelings in the farming community.
That is why I would suggest very strongly to this government that it quickly restructure the western grain transportation subsidies into another program so that we do not have these disputes arising even among farmers. We do not need any more disputes. We need more co-operation.
If we do not get more co-operation between farmers, manufacturers and transportation we will not compete in this World Trade Organization globe. It is very important that we do enter this World Trade Organization and play fair ball with it.
Mr. Speaker, it was mentioned before that you had some experience in refereeing. I think you will also agree that the linesmen were very important in that game, that they did have to help in keeping the game under control.
I think this is where the hon. member from the NDP failed to realize that we will have referees and linesmen who are not from the multinational food processing corporations. These are going to be set and enforced by countries. It is only with the will and determination of countries like Canada supporting this trade organization, making sure that the laws are kept and abided by that we will have a very successful entry into this trade organization.
I would appreciate it if the hon. members on the other side of the House would take it to heart and make us competitive by becoming competitive inside the country, doing away with trade barriers, doing away with overtaxation and doing away with some of the disruptions in the grain handling system by strikes. We need co-operation. We need this country to get more exports to improve our balance of trade and to make this country productive and rich again.