Mr. Speaker, I am addressing a subject that concerns 36,000 agricultural producers in Canada. The topic is vital because each one has a vital stake in a set of rules that govern their agricultural production. We call these rules the supply management system.
Supply management has been kind to the producers of my own constituency. We have a healthy industry in the Fraser Valley that has contributed much to our community.
Agricultural activity continues to be the backbone of the Chilliwack-Abbotsford area. I would be remiss if I did not mention another agricultural mainstay of my riding, so I want to speak for a moment on the federal agricultural research station located in Agassiz, B.C., which for decades has served our dairy community. Unfortunately its role in the future of the agricultural industry has been threatened of late.
For a while we heard false rumours that the station was to be closed. Then we heard that the station's dairy herd was moving to the unlikely town of Oyster River on Vancouver Island, a place far removed from the Fraser Valley and the mainstay of the industry, where new facilities would have to be built and feed transported at a tremendous cost. Not only that, the milk would have to be transported off Vancouver Island back to the mainland. It did not make a lot of sense.
We further heard that the University of British Columbia was willing to move its experimental herd to Agassiz and build a research facility there but that it would follow the station's dairy herd to Oyster River if the station chose to relocate it there. We brought the matter up with the minister and his parliamentary secretary. I would like to thank them for placing the relocation process on hold pending further investigation. I am confident that once the facts are all out on the table the Agassiz dairy herd should have a solid place in our research future.
I shared these details so that my constituents might be clear about the situation. I publicly urge the minister to make every effort to resolve the impasse among the local producers, the processors and the officials at the station or in Ottawa. I stand ready to assist in bringing the parties together so that the dairy community and the local community will continue to benefit from the research herd remaining in Agassiz and benefit from the university's significant contribution. That is our local situation.
I also want to touch on the national supply management problem that we cannot ignore. The problem is that our system has been abruptly challenged by a larger set of trading rules. These new rules operate on a global basis. They operate between nations, not within nations. The new rules are the free trade agreement, the NAFTA and the GATT. These agreements threaten to swamp our national rules and thus affect the livelihood of many thousands of producers.
The old rules are like a river that has cut a deep channel over the years. With each passing year the river's course has become deeper and more resistant to change. Once our supply management system was instituted economic interests were channelled in a specific direction and financial interests are now deeply entrenched.
A new channel is being cut by the outside world and we have little choice but to direct our economic river into the mainstream of the world's economy. Our supply managed sectors are realizing the need to explore new markets and to develop new products for the global economy of the future. The streams that fed our made in Canada agricultural policy have been rerouted. Our supply managed sectors must change with the times.
The major obstacle to change is the economic interests that I mentioned earlier. The winners for the last 20 years, the producers and the processors within the supply management industry, may stand to lose some of their security when the rules change.
The rules of the old game are written by an old name in Canada. Pierre Trudeau promised a national supply management system in 1970 and the Liberal Party has defended it ever since. Even as recently as last year's election period Liberal candidates were still holding on to the past insisting that article XI(2)(c) regarding import quotas would be strengthened and clarified under the GATT arrangement they promised to producers. The flip-flop immediately after the election reinforced my belief that the Liberals were not being frank with the agricultural community.
Political gamesmanship does not go over very well with the agricultural community. Saying one thing while doing another is guaranteed to raise their ire and raise their concerns as it should. It is a case of once bitten twice shy, and the supply managed industry is checking for bite marks as we speak. This time it needs to know the facts, not the wishful thinking, so it can start planning its future.
For example, the task force on the future of supply management calls on the system to become "fully market responsive". Yet the whole weight of the report focuses on preserving the system, a system that is not fundamentally market responsive. There is a contradiction here. Which will it be: status quo or market driven?
New interests are arising in Canada. They are the producers who have been waiting many years to get into the system but have been legally barred from doing so because they could not afford to buy the right to produce. What is their status? There are consumers as well, consumers who have paid higher prices for food products for over 20 years to ensure a steady supply and to ensure that producers within the system received an adequate price that they have set for themselves.
There is also a new political party that gives voice to those previously shut out of the system. The Reform Party of Canada is the new political vehicle for the average consumer and the average producer who wants to grow, sell and buy agricultural goods without unnecessary government interference; those who want to buy quality food at more competitive prices; and those who want to produce it, not only for Canada but for the global marketplace.
This is not to say that current producers are doing something wrong. Far from it. We have an excellent, productive industry producing the highest quality food in the world. However Reformers insist that the world economy is forcing change upon us. To resist that change is not possible. It will harm us in the long term. We must not obstruct inevitable change, but we must construct that change so that the transition from a managed to a less managed system will continue to be orderly. We want to avoid financial hardship for the supply managed sectors. We must lay out a workable, innovative work plan for all the stakeholders and then stick to it.
This problem also touches on national unity. As members may be aware, agricultural production was increased during World War II to serve the allies overseas. After the war the supply management system froze the allocation of quota at historic levels of production. Quebec, for instance, produced a lot of milk during the war. Today it still produces almost half of all industrialized milk in Canada. The right to do so is protected by law.
Quebec is not about to give up its share of the markets in other parts of Canada now, even though it is obviously inefficient to ship butter and other milk products to B.C. instead of producing it right in B.C. Allocating production through political decisions
is another fundamental inefficiency. We will not survive in the world economy unless we are able to increase our efficiency.
I have a special word of caution for my friends in the Bloc. At least within the national system farmers in Quebec can bargain to retain their production rights, but what if Quebec opts out of Canada? Would Canadian producers gladly accept Quebec's produce when producers all over the country are clamouring to increase their production to serve their local populations?
Quebec's privilege within the system has been maintained at least in part to preserve national unity and that incentive would disappear if Quebec separated from Canada. Quebec would lose the market share it currently enjoys within the Canadian system and western producers would happily move quickly to fill that market share.
Farmers all over Quebec would suddenly have to scramble to sell their produce. They would not be able to sell all of the excess in the United States. They would have to look at overseas markets. The adjustment would be painful indeed. Agriculture in Quebec may be permanently stunted as a result.
The industry can co-operate together on a national basis to find an orderly way to convert to a less regulated market, a way that would be fair to producers and benefit consumers all across this great land. One thing the government can do is promote more agricultural exports that would allow increases in production over present quota allocations.
We commend the efforts of the Minister for International Trade to increase exports and we urge the minister of agriculture to follow his lead and work harder to develop these export markets.
I have another example to illustrate that. The cruise ships that dock in Vancouver recently wanted to buy 20,000 dozen eggs from a B.C. processor-producer but finally gave up trying to get the necessary permission from the marketing board to supply them. The eggs were finally shipped from the United States and we lost that market.
This kind of rigidity is no longer acceptable. We must take advantage of the opportunities available to us in the marketplace. Let us hope that Ontario's recent decision to boost chicken production is a sign of a positive change in attitude. Indeed, we must allow all agricultural sectors to be market responsive.
Right now producers and processors collaborate to set their own prices using a complex cost of production formula but the market, not producers and processors, should set the prices for these products. We can help by including all supply managed sectors in the government's whole farm income stabilization plan. This would be a safety net based on total farm income applying to all farmers.
The managed sectors need to embrace this whole farm plan even though it would expose producers to market prices which might be lower than the supply managed prices they calculate for themselves. If the supply managed sectors are allowed to opt out of the whole farm alternative and continue on as at present, a GATT panel may rule against them and once again Canada could suffer trade penalties as a result. We could also suffer the insecurity of once again throwing this whole supply managed system into the wind.
Our producers cannot escape change. The old ways are no longer the best ways. It is time for us to free up our internal markets to include more producers and processors and benefit Canadian consumers, to strike down interprovincial barriers to trade, to capitalize on our nation's abundant agricultural potential by increasing production for markets all over the world.
As Reformers have said for years now, give Canadians the tools of deregulation, give farmers the freedom to make economic decisions without interference and they will do the job of competing with the best in the world for price and quality.