Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-14. I note that this is a rehash of Bill C-101 which the government forced back into the House after it died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued. It is a travesty of the democratic process, but nonetheless we are talking about it once more.
Unlike the previous speaker, I cannot find it in my heart to compliment the government for introducing the bill. I believe it has some serious shortcomings. However, our role is to be critical of legislation introduced by the government and the Reform Party has been doing an excellent job in that role.
Hon. members may have noticed the results of the byelections last night. The Reform Party gained considerable ground in Atlantic Canada and in Etobicoke North. Obviously the people are quite concerned about the message being delivered by the government. The way it is running the country is coming under closer and closer scrutiny. At the next election, when Canadians are given a real choice, they will choose something else, such as Reform.
The intention of the government in Bill C-14 is to regularize or streamline the process by which the main railway companies can abandon rail lines. I am thinking about the government's platform of jobs, jobs, jobs. With this bill it is creating an easier opportunity for the rail companies to abandon lines instead of maintaining them. All the jobs that go along with those lines will be lost.
The communities served along those lines will be diminished. Rural Canada will find it more difficult to maintain itself on a sustainable basis when competing with urban centres.
However, the government finds it quite appropriate to introduce rules and regulations which will make it easier for those companies to abandon lines. They will still have to justify what they are trying to do, but the government has given them a mechanism whereby they can say: "We will allow this line to deteriorate and we will abandon it without any real public input". It is shocking because this is the government that ran on jobs, jobs, jobs.
From the Reform point of view, a job in the country is every bit as important as a job in the city. Rural Canada is in jeopardy. It would have been a great opportunity for the government to protect and sustain rural Canada and rejuvenate the small cities and towns which have a way of life that is fading fast. It is a way of life that has produced great Canadians. It provides an opportunity for parents to raise their children without concerning themselves with crime and other things that little kids should not be getting into. It was a wonderful opportunity, but it is gone.
Let us look at the other side of the coin. If it is the government's intention to allow the railroads to abandon tracks, why is it not coming up with a plan to encourage small business entrepreneurs to operate these branch lines?
Unfortunately these small entrepreneurial companies do not seem to be of any concern to the government. It is just concerned with the big picture. As long as it can say that jobs, jobs, jobs are being created, it does not care about the small business entrepreneur who could help achieve that objective. The government has done nothing to create an environment in which these entrepreneurs could compete successfully by taking up the challenge of rejuvenating branch lines which are being abandoned by the major railroads. It is a great opportunity missed totally and completely by the government which does not seem to care.
Some branch lines in Alberta are run by small organizations. The member for Crowfoot has a branch line going through his riding. It is working profitably. It provides much better service that the major railroads. It is responsive to clientele. Its frequency is much
improved. It does not wait until there are 100 cars before it sends a train down the line. If there is grain to be moved the train is there.
It is time for us to recognize that small business entrepreneurs are capable of running railroads every bit as good as the large monoliths that are now being given the opportunity to abandon rail lines across the country. These railroads have been instrumental in the development and building of our nation. It is tragic to see them go.
The elevators are going along with them. My eldest son laments every time he hears about a grain elevator being demolished because he sees it as a part of our history disappearing. He is only 17, yet he realizes they are part of our history and will never return, again courtesy of this government. It does not have the foresight and the vision to realize that jobs can be created and protected.
I will now discuss another area of concern to my riding, the alfalfa business. I have been critical of the government in its treatment of the railroads by allowing them to abandon Canadian jobs. The alfalfa business is being treated in exactly the same way.
The alfalfa business has over 1,000 directly related jobs, yet the government ran roughshod over the entire industry when it cancelled the WGTA program. It did not give a hoot about the industry and how it will work in the new environment which has been forced on it.
As I have said, over 1,000 jobs are directly maintained in rural Canada. They are dependent on the alfalfa business, not to mention those spin-off jobs related to repair and maintenance. It is a $100 million export business. It generates the better part of $100 million in revenues although the government does not seem to care.
When the government eliminated the WGTA, the subsidy program for the railroads from which the alfalfa industry obtained a benefit, it did not consider the specific concerns and needs of the alfalfa industry. Alfalfa is a high volume, low value product. It is not like cereals which are low volume, high value. Yet the alfalfa industry has been eliminated from the subsidy entirely. Therefore, the elimination of the subsidy will cause the cost of transportation to increase much more dramatically for the alfalfa industry than for the grain growers.
We know the grain growers received $1.6 billion as a final settlement. The alfalfa people are going to get $40 million. However, it does not stop there. The $1.6 billion being paid to farmers allows them to reduce the capital cost of their land and therefore is non-taxable. They are allowed to keep the money.
Because land is not a depreciable asset, farmers can leave that reduced capital cost sitting on their financial statements until they retire. Then of course there is the $500,000 capital gains exemption for farmers when they sell out at retirement. This $1.6 billion is by and large going to flow through to farmers tax free.
This is not so in the alfalfa business because those people are not really in the business of land ownership. They will have to pay tax on this money if it is income, and there is a reasonable chance Revenue Canada will declare this to be income rather than a capital cost subsidy. If it does that at a 50 per cent tax rate, the $40 million subsidy becomes a $20 million subsidy because the government will claw $20 million of the $40 million right back into its own pocket. That is not going to do the alfalfa industry much good.
On the other hand, the government may say that this can be applied to capital. Unlike the farmers who can reduce their land values, they will have to acquire depreciable assets. This means they will be denied capital cost allowance by virtue of the grant and over the next few years will be paying higher taxes.
Again the government will get the $20 million back and not one penny of it will benefit the alfalfa industry. This is Canada we are talking about, a country in which this government does not seem to care about the small entrepreneur, the railroads.
This government does not seem to care about the small plants in my riding that generate jobs in rural Canada which are seriously in jeopardy because this government, even though it ran on the platform of jobs, jobs, jobs, is sitting back while its policy changes are putting these jobs in jeopardy, if not destroying them. It does not seem to care.
That is the type of legacy this government is leaving for Canadians. I and the people in my riding do not like it one bit. I can assure the government that there is absolutely no support from the people in the alfalfa business in Legal, Alberta, which is part of my riding.
The alfalfa people have been asking for about a $70 million subsidy. They feel that on a pro rata basis that is much more appropriate than the $40 million less tax being handed out by this government. That is why they are asking for $70 million and that is why they are asking that this amount be given as a prescribed amount, which allows it to be income tax exempt and allows them to get the money on the same basis as the farmers are getting.
If that type of insult were not enough, when the minister of agriculture announced the cancellation of the WGTA program and the introduction of the final payment, rather than paying the final payment on arable acres, he decreed that it was to be paid on land where cereals are being grown. Therefore the payment was denied to farmers who were growing alfalfa in that particular year.
I listened to the previous speaker tell us how concerned he was about sustainable development. Sustainable development is good but sustainable farming includes growing alfalfa periodically.
Because farmers were maintaining a policy of sustainable farming, the minister of agriculture said: "Tough if you happen to be growing alfalfa this year because you are not going to participate in the final payout under the WGTA that every other farmer who was growing cereal that year was able to participate in". If one member of the government speaks about sustainable development, we should also hear from the minister of agriculture and everyone else on the other side of the House.
We in the opposition agree with sustainable development and sustainable agriculture. Canadians agree with it. Why do we not hear from the minister of agriculture? Does he not care about the small alfalfa plant which generates $100 million worth of exports for this country, sustains 1,000 jobs in this country and pays taxes in this country like everyone else? He does not seem to care.
It is a disgrace for me to stand and accuse the minister of agriculture in that way but the unfortunate news is it is true.
I could go on about the alfalfa business, but the point is it is entitled to a fair shake. As farmers, as producers, as rural Canadians, as people who are participating in this economy and as people who are trying to make a living in Alberta while this government keeps pulling the rug out from underneath them, surely they deserve the same type of treatment as cereal growing farmers and as the railroads which are being allowed to abandon entire branch lines, perhaps even the branch line that services the alfalfa plant. Who knows, maybe in five years even it could be gone.
Finally we have the announcement by the Minister of Finance in the budget that he will be selling off these railway cars. He will allow a surcharge of 75 cents a tonne for the movement of commodities. Who will get hurt the most? Again, it is the alfalfa industry. It has high volume and low value. It has to move its product from the prairies to the coast for export to Japan which is a large consumer of the alfalfa pellets. What do we have? Another charge being levied on it.
It has not even had the opportunity to adjust, reinvest and improve its productivity to accommodate the elimination of the WGTA. Now it will get hit with a 75 cent a tonne surcharge, compliments of the Minister of Finance. After having dealt with the minister of agriculture, the industry now has another minister coming at it. Where will it stop? Is it the intention of this government to beat it into the ground, suffer the losses of jobs, suffer the decline of rural Canada and allow the railroads to dictate the policies of this government by asking for the authority to abandon lines as they so desire?
The government has a lot to answer for. With a bit of homework it could do a lot better. I expected that with this bill we could have had a lot better.