We will see. I think there will be some changes made. Who knows what can happen?
I would like to clear up a few misconceptions this afternoon-if I have the time but it could take more than I have-that farmers have been getting all these transportation subsidies. I have learned a few things since I have come to sit on the transportation committee. I hope the hon. members from Quebec are listening.
I really love Thunder Bay port because while I was farming, every time I turned on the combine it went on strike. You can see my love for that nice little port. In testimony before us at Thunder Bay, as the witnesses came before us, I was astounded I had never heard about some of these things.
Do you know that a pilot who gets on a ship at Montreal and takes that ship through the locks and the lakes up to Thunder Bay charges just approximately $2.65 a tonne for his services? This is 15 per cent of the total freight cost from Thunder Bay to northern Europe. These pilots-I call them pirates, not pilots-charge a range of from $3,800 to $5,000 a day. That is where grain transportation subsidies are going. No farmer, no manufacturer, no producer or processor ever can expect wages like that. That is not the whole side of that story.
This pilot association is run by a federal crown corporation which over the last 20 years has cost the taxpayer $50 million. This year, that corporation is going to be in debt to the tune of $5 to $7 million. Are you surprised why we have to continue borrowing? This borrowing disease, this spending-itis is going to bankrupt this country one of these days. I am wondering what labour unions will say then.
Another few interesting facts I found out, usually when we talk of $500 million in transportation subsidies to farmers, that is all somewhere in the farmer's pocket or bankbook. I will throw in a few more figures and tell you what fair treatment we do get by some of our terminals.
In Thunder Bay, Cargill Grain pays $1.002 million in property taxes. A couple of hundred kilometres down the road at Duluth, $64,000 is paid. Then we wonder why farmers are looking south of the border to try to move some grain.
I will give some stats I received at these hearings. They are based on tonnages of storage and property tax per tonne. At Vancouver it costs $6.27 per tonne of storage for property taxes. At Thunder Bay it costs $8.03 per tonne of storage for a terminal. At Duluth it costs the American farmer 27 cents. AGP, Inc., another grain terminal, is paying 15 cents. And we as farmers are being accused of taking subsidies. These subsidies are going to taxes that have been developed by overspending, mismanagement and corruption.
I want to tell the Liberal members from the west coast when the transport minister talks of becoming a market economy and becoming more efficient, the farmers with some government help did build the Prince Rupert high throughput elevator so that we could move grain faster. But what has happened there? Because we can move it faster than Vancouver, we are not paying $6.27 per tonne. We are paying $16.43 per tonne for property taxes. Now tell me, how do you think the producer can stay alive with those types of inconsistencies and discrimination?
The story does not end at Thunder Bay. Manitoba Pool Elevators testified and pointed out that for the same type of operation in Thunder Bay, it also paid $110,196 in corporation taxes. In British Columbia $18,615 was paid for the same amount of operations.
After hearing these figures when the labour unions came before us I could hardly sit still. I told those gentlemen that I knew a lot of times we in the west were being downtrodden but I never thought it was that bad. I said that when I went home I would tell every grain farmer not to ship one more bushel of grain through Thunder Bay because I am fed up with it. If I have to, I will take every bushel of grain to Churchill by dogsled before I will ship a bushel to Thunder Bay. Something people have to start realizing is that things have to change or there will be no producers left.
If they want to realize why we have to borrow because of this WGTA, which I called the vulture, in testimony before the standing committee on agriculture Ted Allen said that they have not rationalized the rail system or the elevator system in a very significant way or as significantly as they should have for about
10 years because the Western Grain Transportation Act encouraged them not to make those changes.
Now we have a system that is 10 years behind the American system. This Liberal government is throwing the whole mess on the farmers' backs saying: "Fix it. We got you into the mess. Here it is. Help yourselves". It astounds me that politicians cannot see that if they do not have producers or manufacturers they do not need a rail system. One of these days we will smarten up and realize that.
How inefficient is this system? I would like to read a few statements made by Ted Allen. Last summer he said: "We moved two vessels seven times to different terminals for a load of barley. It took a long time. Every time one of these vessels moved one way, it cost $18,000". Now you are trying to tell me that is the farmers' way of doing business?
A 25,000 tonne vessel went to Mexico in November 1994 on which there was loaded 9,000 tonnes of No. 1 Red, 5,000 tonnes of No. 2 Red and the balance, less than half, was No. 3 Red. Who do you think paid for that? The western farmer.
This government tries to tell us that Mexico is dictating to us telling us to take the subsidies off grain transportation or it will not buy. Something is wrong in this country when a government that has a $2.5 billion trade surplus with us tells us what we have to do.
I have raised four children and four grandsons. When I see my wife giving an equal number of crayons to the youngsters to play with and one of them says: "My colour is not right, I want yours," and the other child does not ask for one in return, very soon one of the kids is without crayons. That is exactly what has happened to our agriculture policy. Everybody has taken our crayons and now we have nothing left to colour with. It is sad but it is a fact.
There are a few other statements I would like to read. I was pleased last December when the transport minister acknowledged that labour on the Canadian railways was 64 per cent as efficient as the U.S. We were losing about 40 per cent efficiency in the labour force on the train system.
Using simple mathematics, I have used 50 per cent, giving them the benefit of the doubt. If 50 per cent of the labour costs are wasted, out of the 22 million tonnes of grain we export and the $10 million we ship internally farmers lose $220 million. That sounds as if the farmers are getting rich on transportation subsidies.
Not only that, there is good reason to wonder why the grain elevator system tariffs are as high as they are. When we compare the results of shipping through the U.S. on terminal and primary elevator tariffs, we lose roughly another $360 million. There is over $500 million gone right there. Where are farmers putting the money into their pockets? I hope someday we become honest enough to look at these problems and address them so we can resolve them.
It is always encouraging to see some people trying to solve these problems. I am impressed with some of the statements we have heard from members on the opposite side. I think if they would really buckle down and do what they are saying, a lot of things would get resolved.
Verbal agreements or promotions of some things are not as good as the real thing. I was not surprised by some of the statistics in the papers when Team Canada went off to Europe. It was to really promote some industries and get some extra business for this country.
I could not believe some of the results that came back from that meeting. I had been talking in the House about the agriculture subsidies, the boneless beef coming into Canada and how the GATT had more or less set quotas of 75,000 tonnes. Then I saw the trade minister in Australia and New Zealand promoting more offshore beef into this country while we were being told at the same time to diversify by increasing beef and pork production.
I have seen them over import 30-some thousand tonnes of boneless beef which was more than the GATT organizations had set for a quota; 30,000 tonnes went straight from Canada into the U.S. It reminds me very much of the cap that was put on our wheat because of our wheat board and grain companies dumping grain.
The problem here again is that Australia and New Zealand have a $300 million trade surplus with us. We are borrowing this money. What are we paying for interest? What is it costing us for jobs? Five jobs are lost for every boner cow exported to the U.S. instead of doing it ourselves. Is this job creation?
It really took the cake when Xcan, which I imagine was a member of the Team Canada approach, went to China and probably started looking at investment opportunities. There was a news release on March 2. This astounds me: "Pools pull out of China project".
The three prairie wheat pools have decided to drop out of a malting barley plant development in China. The pools, along with the ITI world investment group, were negotiating with the Chinese to build a $58.8 million malting plant in Quingdao, China. Barley would be sourced in Canada and Chinese beer would be brought back into this country. That is diversification. That is the type of support we get from our own agriculture community. Where do we go next?
I would like to dwell for a few minutes on an issue that has been very near and dear to my heart, the inquiry I asked the justice minister to make into the dumping of Canadian wheat into the U.S. I provided the facts I had from farmers who had taken samples and had given me the information. I acquired the documents from the U.S. customs people on what had happened. When I found out that $3.50 a bushel of wheat was being exported into the U.S. by Sask-Pool at $2.02 to $2.05, I could not believe it. For every bushel of grain that we are exporting at
that price into the U.S. we are hurting our own economy because we are losing millions of dollars that could be running our country and promoting more industry.
When this hit the news the co-operator phoned Lorne Hehn, the chief commissioner for the Canadian Wheat Board. Mr. Hehn said: "Sales of 1992 wheat to American companies could have lowered prices or plugged individual elevators, but I don't believe our sales into those areas really impacted on the price in a negative way". One can dump grain at lower prices and plug elevators and it is still not impacting in a negative way. This is his reason: "We were very careful about that factor. Prices for feed wheat rose during the year, while large Canadian sales were being made so that proves that price pressure was not there".
When in an up market we can dump grain into the U.S. at half price and the market continues to go up, how is that helping our country? Can members see why American farmers are furious? I do not blame them one bit. It is unbelievable but those are the words of Mr. Hehn.
What do we do about it? I have waited for two months now to see what is going to happen and so far nothing has happened. I made a challenge under that news release on behalf of the pasta producers in western Canada. They came to see me around the middle of November, claiming this heavily subsidized pasta from Italy was coming into our country and they could not afford to process at that price any more.
When I showed my facts and figures to the prairie pools which were a little upset about my claims, I do not know what happened. They all of a sudden sat back and had no answers. This is what is happening in our pasta industry today.
We sell durum wheat to the Americans for the pasta industry. We sell it to the Italians. The Americans bring back into this country on a yearly basis about 40.896 million kilograms of pasta for a value of $84 million. This pasta is costing us about $2 per kilogram. The Italians ship in 17 million kilograms of pasta at $19 million, about half the price the Americans are putting their pasta into this country for.
I asked representatives at the prairie pools if they could explain how we can sell durum wheat to Italy, ship it over there, have it manufactured and bring it back into this country for half the price. It is not subsidized. They just shook their heads and said they have no explanation.
Do we know what that means in Canadian dollars? I wish somebody would figure it out. Italy has a $982 million trade surplus with Canada. We are borrowing almost a billion dollars to have the Italians process pasta and then ship it back into our country and we pay the interest. That is supposed to build a country? That is supposed to help us diversify? I wonder how. I hope somebody can explain that to me.
We have heard so much about R and D, about where the money is really coming from. The Reform Party has said time and time again that R and D is one of the most important things and we will never cut that back.
Here is a statement a Liberal member made in Manitoba. I feel these people do have a grip on things but they are afraid to stand up for what they believe in. The government member needs to focus on the fact that dollars spent on research and development are returned 10:1 in the livestock field and 40:1 in grain. He said currently only 17 per cent of government spending on agriculture goes to R and D. What an enlightening statement from an hon. Liberal member.
I will point out what the government has done for R and D. While a budget background document cites a 11 per cent cut to agriculture research, almost half the total, 2,069, job cuts came in research; 779 research scientists will retire or join the UI fleet; 138 vacancies will not be filled. While the white coats may have been hit hard by the budget, the white collars survived relatively unscathed; 149 full time positions were removed from the corporate services. The fat in Ottawa continues while people in the rest of the country get cut.
I encourage members to not only stand up and make comments but provide action. History will record it, no matter how we joke about it. When I read in Hansard about what took place in the 1970s and 1980s, it is there forever, and that is exactly what is going to happen here.