Mr. Speaker, through you I will say to the minister that I will probably throw some junk, some garbage or maybe dockage, whatever you call it in the farm industry, because I was really surprised at some of the comments that I heard here today when I see how well we have done in this transportation system with this backtracking issue.
I would like to read what Mr. Ted Allen said to the standing committee on agriculture on our grain handling system on November 29, 1994: "We measure performance in this country against our transportation constraints. We say how much better we are doing because we had an abysmal year, so we do quite a bit better than in a really poor year. We never measure our performance against what the opportunity was and how close to maximizing the opportunity we came, which every other marketer I know of does".
Why have we not taken the opportunities when the subcommittee on transportation a year ago said to stop the backtracking, it is costing us millions and millions of dollars? Every member on that subcommittee said now. Every member on the agriculture committee said now. This is a violation of the Western Grain Transportation Act. This was a loophole that the grain companies and the railways found. We could not stop it.
It has cost us $15 million since last July 31 for this backtracking. Not only the backtracking has been the cost but the car allocation. We have failed to meet commitments again and again.
I will read another comment that Mr. Allen made. This was last year in November: "Yesterday I was talking to an elevator manager from Hargrave, Manitoba, who happened to be in my office. He was telling me that he has 25 orders for cars that he was supposed to have received a long time ago. The other day he finally got three of them". That is performance. I cannot imagine how much better we can get if that is the way we are running our railway system.
When I looked at the log book today from Vancouver for last October, November and December and saw that a ship sat there for 27 days waiting for grain to be loaded, I think we have room for improvement. It does not seem to me that if we made 40 per cent improvement in the last six, seven or eight months why these ships are waiting that long. We want to congratulate each other when we do make improvements but let us not overdo it. We could become very complacent in this House.
The other thing I would like to address is the Mexican issue. I was not aware that there was a trade action against us until we were briefed by the agriculture people the other day on Bill C-66.
I asked why we are stopping backtracking to Mexico. Are we shipping grain to Mexico? I thought this was a backtracking bill. They said: "There could be a few loads going in that direction. We will have to find out. We do not know". That is how knowledgeable the people were who briefed us on this.
After a few phone calls I finally found out that Mexico had a trade sanction against us for shipping subsidized wheat to it; not just to us, also to the Americans.
If the members will read the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement they will start to realize that the Americans promised not to dump EEP wheat into our markets, of which Mexico is one. That is where the problem started. That is why there was a trade sanction against us.
If this government is trying to tell us that Mexico can take action against us with a trade sanction, I want to ask under what kind of clout or under what kind of conditions it can do that.
Mexico has a trade surplus of almost $3 billion with Canada. Where in the heavens can a trading partner tell me that I am not trading fairly when I import four times as much as it takes from us?
Statistics Canada says that out of a $37 billion trade surplus that we have with the U.S. we dwindle that down by $20 billion with other countries like Australia and New Zealand which bring in boneless beef by the thousands of pounds. Our farmers are going bankrupt.
Is this the way our government is trading? Is this how we get trade actions against us? It sure seems like good business to me. No wonder we are going bankrupt.
The trade surplus it has with us is $2.77 billion in total products. It could be other than agriculture. These are Statistics Canada figures that I am using. If they are not correct maybe we can get rid of Statistics Canada.
It is time Reform starts throwing a few of these figures around. When I see Australia with a trade surplus of $181 million wanting to bring in more boneless beef, and I see New Zealand with a $126 million trade surplus wanting to bring in more beef, where do we finally go with our beef? Where do we finally get the jobs that we were promised in that nice little red book? We have to start milling our wheat, we have to start milling our pasta, we have to start doing something.
As a farmer I know that if I continually buy more than I sell I am going to have a big problem. This is what has happened to this country. It is not just interest rates. If we take $20 billion trade deficits and borrow that at 8 per cent, just figure that out.