It is painful for the Liberal Party whip to hear the truth. Yet, he represents an agricultural riding from Ontario. He should understand the issues to which I am referring and which exist in his predominantly French speaking riding.
Since 1958, the dairy industry has always been protected and supported under the Agricultural Stabilization Act, which was passed by a Conservative government. In 1986, Ottawa approved a long-term dairy policy and authorized payments, to dairy producers, of $6.03 per hectolitre of industrial milk having 3.6 kilograms of fats. That policy was implemented under the Conservatives.
In 1991, the Conservative government abolished the Agricultural Stabilization Act and replaced it with the Farm Income
Protection Act. That ended federal support to the dairy industry, since this industry was excluded from the new agreement.
In its November 1992 budget speech, the Conservative government announced its intention to reduce by 10 per cent the level of subsidies to the dairy industry, and to apply similar reductions to all subsidies and payments to the agricultural sector.
Starting with the August 1, 1993 dairy year, and following that decision, the federal government therefore reduced payments to dairy producers from $6.03 down to $5.43 per hectolitre. This is tragic.
So, this Liberal government simply had to confirm the agricultural policy of the Conservatives to gain authority to set the subsidy at $5.43 per hectolitre, starting with the April 1994 to March 1995 fiscal year. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The Conservatives used to run things and now the Liberals are in office, but things have not changed at all. I am really amazed when I read the government's objective in Part II of the Main Estimates 1995-96, under Agriculture and Agri-Food, Canadian Dairy Commission, on page 2-8, and I quote: "To provide efficient producers of milk and cream with the opportunity of obtaining a fair return for their labour and investment and to provide consumers with a continuous and adequate supply of dairy products of high quality". Is this what a 15 per cent cut in revenue a year will achieve? No.
How inconsistent can the government get? It is as if milk producers are not efficient and are obtaining too high a return for their labour and investment. Go work on a farm for a week and you will see how tough it is, how long the days are in an industry where working hours are not tallied up. Worse still, with this statement, the government is trying to reassure us that the supply of dairy products will not be affected and that consumers will even be able to benefit from this decrease in consumer price. And there you have it. A little something for everyone. What arrogance.
I have a final point to make today.
Why is the federal government, the Liberal government, on the one hand, providing a package of transition measures to the tune of $1.6 billion for owners of prairie farm land in Western Canada because it is terminating the freight-rate subsidies, but on the other hand, is implementing no such transition measures for Quebec farmers? Why have Western producers been given an advantage over their Quebec counterparts?
Why does the federal government always apply a double standard when it has to protect the interests of English-speaking Canadians. Is that not just another sign that Canada is in fact made up of two countries? Is that not a sign that there are two countries in Canada, one in eastern Canada and one in western Canada? The issue is not related to racism, but to the fact that we have always had two different policies, since agriculture is not the same in these two different regions. When we look at things, we realize that Quebec has always been put at a disadvantage.