Mr. Speaker, my colleague in the Reform Party makes an excellent point. The government is trying to paint this as a partisan issue of some sort. It is not a partisan issue. If we wanted it to be a partisan issue, we would have made it votable. We could have done all kinds of things.
Everybody is trying to take shots at everybody else here. We are trying to highlight the fact that the government has bungled this portfolio badly. We need to address these issues now.
I find it unbelievable that the parliamentary secretary continues to defend NISA. We are here to try to debate the issue. NISA is not cutting it. Farmers have to contribute to it and many farmers have not.
To demonstrate how out of touch the government is, I take one phrase the parliamentary secretary used. He said that it has been the best five years in the history of agriculture. Where do these people live? I concur with what my colleague said. They must be living in downtown Toronto to make a statement like that. They cannot live in rural Canada and maintain that stand.
Then they went on to talk about advance payments. Farmers do not want to borrow more money. That is not why we are bringing forth the motion today. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time, I guess. We have to look at the long range and we have to look at the short range. We have to fix what is broken and help them out in the meantime. That is what has to take place.
I conclude by going back to one thing the minister said. If this is his answer to the whole crisis, we are in big trouble. He said that they wanted to show farmers how to use all the tools in their toolbox. They should not throw a wrench in the gears and bring the whole agricultural machine to a grinding stop and then make that kind of statement. This is ridiculous.
The government ripped out the Crow subsidy. It did not have time for transportation costs. It did not provide for any competition and so on. There has been so much misrepresentation on the part of the government in this debate that it needs to be corrected.