Mr. Speaker, in the budget the government decided to pay western landowners $1.6 billion as a partial offset to the decline in farmland values that will result from the abandonment of the Crow benefit and the Crow rate.
The minister of agriculture has decided in his wisdom to include summer fallow in the calculation for the payment but not the 10 million acres or more of cultivated lands that are seeded to forage crops for hay and seed production. The rationale for this breathtaking leap of logic seems to be that grass seed was not listed in the Crow benefit schedule.
Could the minister explain his version of fairness to one of my constituents who cash rented a half section from an uncle, seeded it to alfalfa and has been producing seed? How does my constituent tell his uncle that his land is not eligible for a payout because his nephew seeded it to alfalfa?
The uncle knows his land will lose just as much value as the land across the fence which is not in alfalfa but there is no compensation for him. How is that fair?