Mr. Speaker, before speaking on Bill C-38 I have to respond to a couple of remarks made by the last speaker.
The Reform Party continues to use every opportunity it can to attack the Canadian Wheat Board. It does so using selective facts. I want to underline those selective facts.
Let me say that if one stacks up the record of the Canadian Wheat Board, the orderly marketing system versus the open marketing system, the Canadian Wheat Board over the past 20 years has shone every year. When one takes all the facts and looks over the years, it will be found that the Canadian Wheat Board has maximized returns back to producers like no other agency anywhere in the world.
I want the member to recognize that. I know it is hard for him to admit he is wrong on that point, but eventually he will have to. We will debate the issue at committee and I hope we can clear up his mind on that matter.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-38 which will repeal the Farm Debt Review Act and introduce a new act to facilitate financial arrangements between insolvent farmers and their creditors.
Let me suggest up front, and I agree with my colleague from Lisgar-Marquette on this point, it is a sad commentary that we need such acts as the farm debt mediation act that will help insolvent farmers gain a settlement with their creditors. It implies that there are financial difficulties on the farms at times, and there certainly are.
Some are caused by management difficulties and many others are caused by problems unrelated to the primary producer's ability to manage. It may be international monetary flows. It may be global prices in terms of commodities. It may be rapidly changing interest rates. Many of us, myself included, who are in the farm community have faced those kinds of times in the past.
In debating this bill this evening thus far, very little has been said about the extreme trauma farm families go through when they face insolvency. I raise this point because the reason, in part, to change the act is that there are far fewer hard financial cases coming forward to the Farm Debt Review Board today than there were 10 or 12 years ago, which is a good thing. When we deal with this issue, because times are a little better now, we in this House tend to deal with things in the abstract. Being in farm financial difficulty is very hard to explain. It is something people cannot understand unless they have experienced it.
For each farm family that is involved in a serious farm financial crisis, it is very troublesome and difficult for them, for the man, his wife and their children, in terms of the loss of pride and in many cases in terms of losing their heritage, in terms of loss of faith in oneself, even though it may not have been a management problem. It might have been an international marketing problem or some such thing that has put these people into financial difficulty. It is extremely painful and troublesome. There have been many suicides in the past in the farm community as a result of the farm crisis.
Whatever we do with this bill, we have to ensure that the bottom line is that we protect those farmers, those families and those rural communities that find themselves in financial distress. We have to ensure there are ways and means within this bill to protect the human aspect beyond the dollars and cents from the difficulties caused by the financial problems.
Eleven years ago, as president of the National Farmers Union, I led a farm finance lobby to lobby on this very issue on this very Hill. Yes, we asked for more power. We asked for an appeal process. We went far beyond where this bill takes us. But this bill does move us a step in a positive direction by putting in legislation some of the powers and by establishing an appeal process where formal appeals can be made.
I said earlier that we must strive to ensure that farm returns continue to surpass farm expenses. In all the other legislative matters we pursue in this House we must ensure that marketing agencies, supply management, the Canadian Wheat Board remain strong to ensure that the government through its agencies is working the best it can to maximize prices and returns to producers from the marketplace.
I mentioned that the government cannot knuckle under to a few law breakers who are trying to violate the laws of the land in terms of surpassing the Canadian Wheat Board. We cannot knuckle under to the few Reformers who are speaking out against the good marketing institutions we have in this land.
Allow me to move to Bill C-38 itself. I agree with the general thrust of the bill. I certainly am in favour of this bill moving to committee to be debated further. Many of the points in the bill were outlined in the Liberal Party document "Food Security for Canadians and a Fair Return for Canadian Farmers" in which we talked about the commitments we would make with respect to farm debt review boards.
The original and current role of the Farm Debt Review Board was outlined in the most recent Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada estimates on page 99. It said: "Farm debt review boards were established in 1986 in each province to ensure that farmers in financial difficulty or actually facing a farm foreclosure are afforded an impartial third party review of individual farm circumstances". That is important.
As my colleague from Dauphin-Swan River said earlier, this bill moves us toward focusing on farmers in insolvent situations. It applies through legislation an impartial administrator and opens up an appeal process.
On initial examination of the bill, the provisions would appear to limit rather than to expand access to the farm debt review process. I have concerns about that and I will be talking about this at committee.
One question which should be addressed is that according to the estimates for the department on page 99, since 1986 there have been 24,000 applications to the Farm Debt Review Board. The two sections applied under were section 16, farmers in financial difficulty, and section 20, insolvent farmers.
How many of these would have been excluded from the process had the insolvency rule applied since the inception of the Farm Debt Review Board? According to Agriculture Canada officials, approximately one-half of the applications under the former act were made for insolvency and the other half under the provisions of financial difficulty.
However, some of those in financial difficulty were found to be insolvent. The point is that perhaps one-third of the applications to the Farm Debt Review Board would never have qualified given that they were not insolvent. I maintain that the fact they were able to go before the Farm Debt Review Board and get mediation services and assistance is why many of them were able to keep their farms and are on the land today.
The bottom line as we debate Bill C-38 is it is important to remember that other things have to come into play as well. I believe we have to re-examine-