Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Group No. 8 amendments. This group calls for the use of final offer selection arbitration to settle disputes so there will not be strikes or lockouts in the system in the future.
I would like to start by reminding members on the government side of some things that have taken place over the past three and a half years leading to this legislation, how they were dealt with, the impact they had on the farming industry in particular, but also on other industries where there are captive shippers. Then I will talk about what the amendments in this group would do to help alleviate some of the problems caused by the lack of action on the part of this government over the past three and a half years.
Three major pieces of legislation have come before the House which have had a huge impact on grain movement over the past three and a half years. The first was the elimination of the Crow benefit, thus requiring farmers to pay the full cost of freight when they had been paying less than half the cost. When this legislation was passed, we agreed to support it if some changes were made that would make things better.
Later, the new Canadian Transportation Act was passed. Again, my colleagues and I called for some changes that would improve the act so the system would work better. Then came the legislation that led to the privatization of CN. My colleagues and I called for a series of amendments that would have made things work better.
What do we have? We have the Crow benefit eliminated, farmers paying the full cost of transportation. Is the system working better? Ask some of our colleagues from Saskatchewan and Manitoba. They know that farmers once again are stuck with grain in their bins and in piles on the ground because they cannot move it. The system is not working. It is failing from one end to the other.
I have many farmers in my constituency who will not be able to seed a crop this spring because they have not been able to sell last year's crop. The system is broken. Grain is not moving. It is sitting in bins. It is sitting in piles on the ground and these farmers are desperate for money.
What have members opposite done to head off this problem, which was most predictable? I predicted it in committee and in the House when we debated every one of the pieces of legislation that should have made things better for farmers when they are moving grain. They did not.
When the government called for eliminating the Crow benefit, we called for changes that would put competition into the system before the act was passed, before the subsidy was removed. We called for a system of incentives and penalties to be put in place so that we would know grain would be moving as it should be moving. Reform called for changes that would ensure that the system would work before the money was taken away. This government ignored our calls for change. As a result it was very predictable, once again in western Canada, we would end up with a situation where grain is not moving and farmers are wondering where they are going to get the money to seed their crops this spring. There will be many who just will not have the money.
The banks are not going to lend them the money this spring because it has been too many years where grain has not moved and they do not have the money to make their debt payments on time. This year is going to be the end of the line for more farmers in my constituency. I have had some of them come to talk to me about this issue. It is a frustrating feeling when they ask what can be done and I say I do not know.
When the Crow benefit was being eliminated we called for these changes that would have put competition in the system. It would have made the system work better. It would have made it so that if the railways did not deliver we could deal with the problem in a meaningful way.
When the new Canadian transportation act was being put in place Reform called for changes that would allow captive shippers to put pressure on CN to make it deliver. The government ignored those pleas. We called for final offer selection arbitration to be put into that legislation and it was ignored.
When this government put forth legislation to privatize CN we called for changes that would have put competition into the system so that the changes would have been made to make the system work better before the legislation was passed. Those changes were not made so here we are today with Group No. 8 amendments once again calling for changes that would at least help in some small way to alleviate the problems that have arisen. This government has acted completely irresponsibly in the past legislation.
If another example is needed of how the government has acted irresponsibly, at the transport committee the chair, the Liberal member for Winnipeg South, when the change was proposed that would have made it so that farmers would not be held hostage to these huge pilot fees, thousands of dollars a day going to a pilot to help guide the ships through the St. Lawrence Seaway system, and the Bloc MPs said they did not want this to change because it is good for people in Montreal, the chair of the committee and the Bloc left-this was just before the Christmas break-and the member for Winnipeg South made a deal. As a result farmers are still left paying this absolutely atrocious pilot fee for every ship moving through the St. Lawrence system and that is just unforgivable. We have had these things that have been done wrong over the last three and a half years.
I believe that the Reform has put forth constructive recommendations to make things work better. We are doing that once again with these Group No. 8 amendments. At least we can help make up for some of the lack of action over the past three and a half years and make it so that we will not have strikes or lockouts in the system so that farmers' grain and the commodities from other captive shippers will move right through to port and indeed until they are loaded on ships and out of port.
We cannot afford to keep building this reputation of being an unreliable suppler of goods. Things are so bad in the grain industry, because of stoppages, because Canada has not been able to supply time after time grain that the customers have ships waiting for, that customers are giving up on us. They are going south to Seattle to other ports where they know the commodity will be delivered when it should be delivered. Canada is no longer a reliable shipper. Japan and other countries that pay top dollar for our commodities are giving up on us.
So who are the losers? The Canadian business people, farmers and people in other industries who depend on the system to work to get their commodity from the producer to the ships loaded for market.
Western Canadian grain farmers are tired of this happening again and again. It was so predictable and we did predict it. We said changes had to be made to fix up the car allocation system and put in place a system of incentives and penalties as in the case of the privatization of CN and the Canadian transportation act, using final offer selection arbitration to make sure that stoppages are not allowed to happen. That is just about the fairest method we can use.
We are not talking about ending the collective bargaining process. We are talking about making the collective bargaining process work better. That is what final offer selection arbitration does. It gives workers and management a chance to work things through. Hopefully things will never get to a point where there will be a need for final offer selection arbitration.
