Mr. Speaker, I went to the Council of Europe, an organization which meets quarterly in Europe. It is members of parliament from all European and eastern European countries. They have a number of committees which discuss the various issues, including economics and agriculture.
I asked the agriculture committee about three years ago what it was planning on doing with subsidizing agriculture in its countries. This was the year when the Liberal government eliminated the Crow benefit to Canada farmers. The Crow benefit was a transportation rate, a subsidy which provided producers with an opportunity to sell their products to market under the old Crow benefit.
It was eliminated by the government because it said WTO warrants the elimination of this subsidy. So it is gone. It has been gone for three years.
The Europeans told me they would never sacrifice their farmers for the U.S.A. with respect to subsidies. They also told me they have five years under WTO to address the subsidy issues. We are three years down the road and subsidies in Europe are as high as they have ever been, rightly or wrongly. We have in our country abandoned our farmers. We have no national agriculture policy.
Because the Americans and the Europeans have not sacrificed their farmers by eliminating subsidies, would the Leader of the Opposition support subsidies for our farmers now in view of the fact that there is a crisis in our farm communities?