Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-34. We will support the bill because enough in it should be presented to farmers.
Why is the bill coming before the House now for final debate? It has been around at least two years. For some time farmers have been calling for the legislation to pass. It has been let sit. It was not of particular interest to the government to deal with it in spite of a very light legislative load before the House.
The government has debated very little of importance since Parliament was called. Very little of importance has passed. In spite of that these pieces of legislation, Bill C-34 and Bill C-38, were forgotten somewhere in a stack on the parliamentary secretary's desk or something. That is unacceptable.
The government has shown a lack of caring and a lack of interest when it comes to farmers. We will raise its record with farmers across the country. They can compare it to what we have proposed, pushed for and presented in our agriculture policy sheet since the last election. We have presented many ideas. Farmers will see the choice is very simple to make and will choose Reform.
Why was the legislation brought forward now? Why was it forgotten on the parliamentary secretary's desk? I cannot answer the questions. There is a rumour that I find difficult to believe, but it could be true there is to be an election. I would not expect it because there are still six months before the four-year mandate is up. I suspect the election will be called between six months and a year and a half from now. That is what normally happens.
A government only calls an election early, especially this early after only 3.5 years, if it is afraid of holding off a little longer. The government has a lot of reason to be afraid of calling the election after four years, as is normal. It was given a five-year mandate. Calling an election after 3.5 years would mean an extra election over a 10-year period and extra cost. What does an election cost? Maybe $400 million, with all the costs to taxpayers. It is somewhere in that range. There will be an extra $400 million spent over a 10-year period and for that reason I doubt the rumour is true.
Let us say that the rumour is true and an election is called in the next few months, or maybe even the next few weeks. I have even heard that rumour. Why would it be that the government held off on the legislation until now? Why would that be?
Could it be that the government is absolutely terrified farmers will reject them en masse because of Bill C-68, the gun control legislation? It has been widely rejected across the country by farmers and by many people in cities and small towns. It is a bad piece of legislation. Farmers will be considering that piece of legislation very carefully when they go to the polls in rural areas.
Could the legislation have been forgotten on the parliamentary secretary's desk deliberately? Not caring about the situation it could put farmers in, it was put aside on the minister's desk to be kept until just before an election call to try to make farmers forget that the $120 million figure that comes the legislation. That is not what it will mean to farmers but it is the political figure that will be thrown around. Could this have been saved until just before election time to cover up for Bill C-68?
Or, could it have been left and forgotten on the parliamentary secretary's desk because farmers remember Bill C-33, the legislation that gives special rights to homosexuals? We now have to pay benefits for any of my staff who claim they are in a same sex relationship. This us what Bill C-33 led to. This was widely rejected right across the country and very strongly in rural areas.
Could the bill have been left on the parliamentary secretary's desk, on the bottom of the pile in the dark, until just now? Surely the government would not be so blatantly willing to cost Canadians an extra $400 million for an election that should not be held until after four years. However, let us say that it is the case. Is the legislation being used to cover up some very bad pieces of legislation rural areas would rather the government had forgotten? That is the reason it was been left on his desk.
I will talk a bit about the bill. Later I will talk about some related issues. Most Reform MPs will support the legislation. We have some very grave concerns about it that I will talk about. Some members have already spoken about the bill and what it deals with regarding advance payments and so on. They have also talked about what it is not.
The concerns of the Reform Party and the changes we tried to make were in four main areas. First, we say a limit should be entrenched on government contingent liability instead of just an open ended liability. Most taxpayers do not accept an open ended liability. An upper limit should be entrenched in the legislation, or the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food should review any increases in the legislation on a regular basis rather than just having orders in council. Orders in council have the power to act on their own. Under the legislation the minister has the power to determine an acceptable liability without it ever coming to Parliament. That fits in with the lack of democratic process the government has shown over the 3.5 years it has been in power.
Second, farmers should be allowed access to emergency advances on an interest free basis but only within part of the existing $50,000 interest free portion. That did not happen either.
Third, we have pushed the government to eliminate the government purchases program which allows government under certain completely unspecified circumstances and with unspecified crops to buy crops. This supposedly helps farmers out of serious situations. It has not been used since 1985 and we really do not know what it is to be used for. It has not been defined in any way. It is bad legislation when it has no guidelines.
Fourth, we pushed throughout the process for all agricultural organizations to be treated the same with regard to this legislation. That has not happened. Which body was given a two-year reprieve from enactment of the legislation? The Canadian Wheat Board. Why would I be surprised by that?
Wheat board commissioners run the board. Farmers have absolutely no say in what happens with the board. We do not even know what is going on inside the wheat board. Everything is kept top secret, a level of secrecy equal to CSIS and the privy council. It is unbelievable. It is the only organization given a two-year reprieve from the legislation. It is no surprise. Government members are in bed with wheat board commissioners.
The wheat board serves a very useful purpose for Canadian farmers. I have always supported it as a marketing agency. However farmers accountability. They want to know what goes on inside the wheat board. They want some answers when they have questions. They want the auditor general to have access to what goes on inside the board. For Pete's sake, the auditor general cannot even get at it. We get no answers.
Only through a leaked document did we find out that commissioners who are fired or choose to leave are paid a severance package of up to $290,000. It is unbelievable.
Why was that the only organization the government decided to give a two-year reprieve in the enactment of the legislation? It is no surprise but it is not acceptable either. Those are the changes we have pushed for regarding Bill C-34.
Again we support this legislation because it is something that farmers want. We believe that the advanced payments do provide
some stability in the whole grain marketing industry. We believe that is required and it has been our policy all along. We support it for that reason but it is unfortunate that the changes we proposed were not dealt with.
I have already talked a bit about why this has come up now. Of course I cannot say why and I would not want in any way to guess at motives. However, the timing is really strange. Could it be that this government is really concerned with the problems in other areas of agriculture which have been brought about directly as a result of its action and inaction?
For example, we have a problem in the grain industry right now. I have neighbours who right now should have all of their supplies on hand for seeding. They should be starting to seed two to three weeks down the road. However, they do not have the money to do that because they have not been able to move their grain. Why can they not move their grain? This government, in the three pieces of legislation that dealt with grain marketing, has failed miserably.
An example is the elimination by this government of the Crow benefit, the Crow subsidy as it was called, which the Reform Party supported. However, our policy was that it should go into a trade distortion adjustment program so that it would be there to help fight the trade battles such as those provided by the European Economic Community and the export enhancement program in the United States. That was our policy that we ran on before the last election. We said that the money should go into that but we recognized that the Crow subsidy was doing a lot of damage moving grain out to central Canada so that all the value added took place in central Canada or in fact encouraged exports through a subsidy so that processing would take place outside the country. That does not make any sense, so eliminating it made sense.
However, there were changes that had to take place before this move was made and they just did not happen.
The same types of changes should have been made when CN was privatized. The same types of changes should have been made with the new Canadian transportation act. Those changes are changes which would have made the transportation system much more effective. It would have brought competition into the system and allowed for competition. It would have dealt with the car allocation problem which just has not been dealt with in any way after 3.5 years of this government knowing when it first came that it was a huge problem. It knew car allocation was not working. We had a special subcommittee set up to deal with that but it just did not happen. Therefore the car allocation system is failing dismally. The wheat board as too much control over car allocation. That is a big part of the reason why we do not have grain moving properly now.
As a result of action and inaction on the part of this government, I have neighbours who just are not going to have the money to buy the inputs to seed this year's crop. They go hat in hand to the banks. Some banks in some cases will lend the money. In other cases, because of the drought situation that we have had for many years in our part of the country, there are many bankers who will not lend the money to farmers. We are going to have farmers who will not be able to seed their crops this year. For many of them it is going to mean the end of their farming careers and the loss of their family farms in many cases.
Why? This government did nothing to allow competition in the system. It did not put in a series of incentives and penalties so that railways and grain companies would perform. It would not put in place, as we recommended, a system of final offer arbitration to deal with disputes with captive shippers. We talked about it under the new Canada transportation act and the privatization of CN and the legislation that eliminated the Crow or the debate around that issue.
We proposed this. We said let us do it. At the committee we proposed the changes that would have given captive shippers the power to deal with the railways and with grain handling companies when they did not perform. Unfortunately those changes were not made.
We have a system that predictably is not working. We predicted that this system would not work with the changes that this government put in place. It was predictable, unfortunately. It has happened.
Now we have grain farmers in a very serious situation where their grain is left, in some cases, in piles on the ground and will spoil. In other cases the bins are full but they cannot get money to seed the crops.
Of course, the wheat board did not help this situation out with its price forecast set extremely high when farmers went into planting last year. Of course, now we are finding that the actual price that farmers are getting for their grain has dropped off to such a low level that it certainly has not helped the problem.
That is the problem and it is the reason that this government brought this legislation up now. It wants to cover up for its inaction and in some cases for its actions since the last election.
Do the Liberals want to cover up that they have delivered on less than 25 per cent of the promises they made in the area of agriculture? That is the case.
While I support this legislation I want farmers to recognize, as I am sure they do, that this is an election ploy. They were left in the lurch for I do not know how long. It seems to me it has been two years since the legislation was proposed. Farmers will recognize that is why this legislation has been held off the table for so long.