Mr. Speaker, I am not in any way going to try to guess the motives. Look at the situation and the rumours that an election will be called in less than six months. Some say it will be called on April 27. That has been mentioned a lot. But that is early and I think Canadians are going to punish the government if it does call an election six months before the earliest acceptable date of four years. Farmers are also going to punish them if the government does that.
I am wondering why the government is raising this now, why it has been put ahead of a lot of other legislation which it stated is very important to it. I would guess that the reason is the Liberals want to deal with the negative reaction to their so-called gun control bill. It is really a bill that imposes penalties on law-abiding gun owners and makes things extremely difficult for them. It overrides normally accepted judicial principles. The legislation puts in place gun registration which will cost by some estimates at least $500 million. That is money that is not available for health care or other things that are really important to Canadians.
Maybe the Liberals are trying to get people to forget about that. Maybe they are trying to get farmers to forget about other legislation that has hurt them very dramatically, legislation such as on transportation which was a dismal failure.
We called for changes to that transportation legislation which would have made things better for farmers. Unfortunately it was not put in place.
The government says it puts agriculture at a high priority. There are two other pieces of legislation which really affect farmers quite dramatically and which are on the table right now. One is Bill C-65, the endangered species legislation. It is another piece of legislation that if it is rammed through before the election is called it will really put farmers in a very awkward situation. I am mentioning farmers because we are talking about an agricultural bill right now. Any land user or owner could be put in a very awkward situation by this endangered species legislation which allows government to mandate that land users, land owners will have to spend money to fence off an area to protect an endangered species or lose the use of their land completely without compensation. That is the key. There will be no compensation for losing the use of their land. There will be nothing to help pay for the cost of fencing the land.
This will not only affect farmers. Think of someone who intends to build a business in an industrial park and a habitat for an endangered species is found in the park. The endangered species legislation can require that the land will never be used for development. The value of the land could be lost almost entirely. Would they be compensated for that? No.
That is another piece of legislation that maybe the Liberals want farmers to forget about. Or could it be the wheat board legislation? I did polls in my constituency and there was one done in the constituency of Beaver River concerning the wheat board. I tabled the results with the agriculture committee of the survey done by Tele Research out of Edmonton. In Beaver River 92 per cent of farmers wanted a choice in marketing grain. They want the wheat board to remain but they want the monopoly removed. They want
what many call a dual marketing system. They want choice in marketing.
Bill C-72 does not give them that choice. The plebiscite that the government held on barley marketing did not even have the option of choice on the ballot. Farmers either have to market their barley through the board in a monopoly situation, or the board would be abolished. That was the choice.
Maybe with this legislation the government is trying to cover up Bill C-72 which is not supported by farmers. It will not give farmers any substantial control over the wheat board. It will make it more difficult for farmers to change the board and to remove the monopoly.
Bill C-72 was rammed through committee. It is a very complex bill. It deals with the Canadian Wheat Board, which is a very complex and secretive organization. I did not feel that I was given enough time to look at each clause as we were going through the bill. I examined the clauses ahead of time and was prepared, but I do not believe the proper amount of time was given at committee to go through the clauses and lay out arguments. The legislation is being rammed through. Farmers do not want it. Maybe the government is trying to cover it up with this bill.
It is not that this bill is a big deal for farmers. Advance payments have been around for many years. This is not putting anything new in place, it is just changing the legislation to ensure that advance payments will not be eliminated.
My best guess why this legislation has come up now is because, according to the rumours in the media, an election will be called some time in the very near future, some time like Sunday, April 27 at one o'clock in the afternoon.