Mr. Speaker, Bloc members are very concerned with rural issues, especially agriculture. I could not say the same about the members opposite. My Bloc colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating the inequality among the provinces and the federal government's lack of action on Quebec's behalf.
In particular, I will try to describe the situation that exists in some rural ridings of the Gaspé Peninsula, where I am from, and the lower St. Lawrence region. In the lower St. Lawrence region, as in most rural areas of the country, agriculture should play a very important role in regional development. There are 400,000 hectares under cultivation, over 260 agricultural enterprises, and sales in the order of $190 million a year.
Our dairy products alone bring in 75 per cent of farm income and account for more than 50 per cent of agricultural enterprises. We also have 16,000 head of meat cattle, 20,000 sheep, and 30,000 pigs.
This translates into more than 7,500 permanent jobs and thousands of seasonal jobs. Forty-eight per cent of the workforce are under 40 years old.
Despite this profile, figures available for the Matépédia Valley alone show that between 1981 and 1991, farmlands declined by 22 per cent. In the same period, the number of farms fell from 420 to 285, a decrease of 32 per cent. The main cause of this reduction is the same as in other sectors.
Our regions produce raw materials for major centres, which process them before selling them back to us. When are we going to understand that, in order to grow, resource rich regions must equip themselves with the infrastructure they need to process and market their raw materials? It is much more important to us than a few sidewalks and a little road paving.
Processing and marketing also mean jobs, which we do not have unfortunately. Processing creates economic activities that give confidence to people and encourage them to start their own businesses.
We, for example, have the potential to develop beef production. But Quebec, unfortunately, is still behind in this area. Our cattle farmers must export their production outside the region without processing it. They even export calves at lesser cost without being able to finish them on site.
Over 100 valley producers have decided to spend more than $160,000 of their own money to build a slaughterhouse so they can process in their own region the animals they breed. Can you believe it, Mr. Speaker?
That is a laudable initiative from the farmers themselves. Such an enterprising attitude must be encouraged.
In my region people got together and are now ready to act.
After a wide ranging consultation with those concerned, the regional co-operation and development council targeted five bio-food development priorities: processing and upgrading bio-food products; diversifying crops; consolidating produc-
tion; developing human resources; developing and marketing regional products.
The people of Matane, Mont-Joli, the Matapedia Valley and our regions know what they need to develop and know how to succeed.
Centralized decisions and programs that apply unchanged throughout the country are surely not the way for the government to boost agriculture in our region. On the contrary, decisions must be decentralized. Programs must be decentralized and adapted to regional realities. Trust the men and women who actually produce what people in the cities need to live. Economic development takes place in the field, not in the offices of senior bureaucrats.
I will give you a demonstration of this unhealthy incoherence, which is demoralizing for the farmers in my region. In March 1995, the federal-provincial agreement which included a testing and experimentation component will end. This program is the most visible of those from the federal government. With the funds it provided, this program helped farmers launch productive activities with significant benefits for our region. Ending this program will really hurt us and I say to the Minister of Regional Development that he must take a stand as soon as possible on extending it.
The regions must be given the wherewithal to do what they decided to do to deal with technological change and changing markets. To overlook the resource regions is to overlook what we are: human beings who need to feed ourselves and live in a healthy environment so that we can develop properly.
Another point that I want to raise immediately is transportation subsidies. Most of them cause unhealthy competition between the regions. They pay transportation companies to send unfinished products to urban centres, instead of encouraging local processing and helping people develop.
This shows the government's neglect. By wanting to centralize everything, it hinders development. By wanting to centralize everything, it makes people dependent. By wanting to centralize everything, it kills any initiative from local people.
When you know that, for almost a decade now, Western Canada has been receiving ten times more than Quebec from the federal government, you can ask yourself some questions. I want agricultural producers from my region and all of Quebec to get what they are entitled to, nothing more but nothing less.
Quebec farmers are striving to reach food self-sufficiency. To that end, they have decided to: first, consolidate and develop their potential; second, make full use again of agricultural land; third, process their products themselves, to the extent possible.
These people, who generate over $4 million in annual revenues, have the right to be considered job creators and major contractors, like any multinational company which finances the old political parties.
It is not because we live in rural areas that we cannot benefit from collective prosperity or that we should be overlooked by a system which favours big business.
Producers from the lower St. Lawrence are entitled to the same support as others. They need that help to consolidate their business, transform their products and make a profit with the added value. They have the right to hope to expand as they deem appropriate. They need help to be able to do so.
I will end with this. When game became scarce, man turned to agriculture for survival, and nothing has since replaced the food obtained from that activity. This is why rural regions such as ours need help.