Mr. Speaker, while I certainly appreciate the consent of all members who are in the Chamber at this time, I will say it is very, very difficult to address this issue in 30 minutes let alone three and a half minutes.
I want to make one brief point on behalf of the producers of Prince George—Peace River, the riding which I am always pleased and honoured to represent in this Chamber. Most members present today have heard me speak over the past two years about the difficulties faced by the farmers of the Peace River country, not just the B.C. Peace River region, but also that part of the extended prairies known as the Alberta Peace River region.
We had two years of disastrous weather leading up to this. Farmers struggled very hard and valiantly to try to bring in a reduced crop in the past two years. The vast majority of the crop for those two years was left out in the fields. It was an absolute—I cannot say a disaster any more than I have already said it. Farmers were faced with this crisis. A lot of farmers could not meet commitments and pay their bills. Governments both at the provincial level in British Columbia as well as the federal level were very slow to react to the disaster.
This year should have been a great year for the Peace River country. We had good growing conditions for the first time in three years. Farmers produced an abundance, a great crop, particularly in its quality, although the quantity was not what they had hoped for. The majority of the wheat was number one high protein, which is not often seen that far north. It is a credit to the farmers themselves that they produced such a great crop. But it was a disastrous year for prices. Members have addressed that quite well today.
I want to speak on behalf of those farmers. We should try and put ourselves in their place. They finally had a year where they hoped they could put a little bit of money into NISA and into these other accounts and pay down some of their bills that had been accumulating over the past two years when despite their most valiant efforts they could not bring the crop in. They finally had a year where they produced a crop and the price has gone into the tank.
As I said a few moments ago, this government should have shown a little bit of foresight and should have reacted when it became government some five years ago. It should have done what we had suggested. One of the suggestions was to reduce programs down to a few and prioritize them in order to help farmers.
One of the programs we said should be put in place was a trade distortion adjustment program to protect farmers from exactly what is occurring today, against unfair subsidization in Europe and the United States, our biggest trading competitors. Then our farmers would have been protected and there would not have been the need for this debate today.