Mr. Speaker, I feel a great deal of responsibility and emotion in rising to speak in this emergency debate on the income crisis in agriculture.
This crisis resembles the one in the early 1980s, when the government was providing three times as much income security as it does currently. At that time, the figure was $3.5 billion, while now it is only $727 million. Something needs to be done urgently, therefore.
There is urgency because farm incomes have dropped 20% to 40%, and for certain types of operation, up to 70%. There is urgency because, to give one example, the sales price of pork is half what it costs to produce it. So what is there left for the producers?
In November 1997, hogs were selling at $168 per hundredweight, while last Friday it was $67 per hundredweight. Grain prices are going the same way.
We are therefore calling for an emergency plan to assist farmers, who have seen their average price go down by 70% this year.
Over and above the market price, there are the rules of international trade to consider, as well as the support the European Union has given to export subsidies, not to mention direct support given to farmers. The U.S.A. has made a direct injection of $6 billion to producers. This breaks down into $2.6 billion in disaster relief and the rest is connected to low market prices. And that is not the end of it.
At a meeting in Montreal as part of the upcoming WTO negotiations, both the Americans and the Europeans expressed a desire to continue supporting their farmers. We must act now with all urgency and fairness for the 1998 production and in the future, depending on the state of the crisis.
What are the effects of this crisis? There are direct effects and there are secondary effects. The direct effects are the abandonment of farms, the agricultural crisis, which very often leads to a family crisis, the move of people from the country to the city and human tragedy on the scale of the suffering experienced on the farm.
Farm producers see a long way ahead. They have a sense of continuity. Theirs is a vocation, a way of life. Agricultural products are not like preserves, set aside until the prices rise.
Then there are the adverse effects. The two most important ones are the direct attack on rural life and the loss of expertise. The attack on rural life is straightforward. When the countryside is emptied, the community loses its structure. As to the loss of expertise, there are actual cases where people realize that destructuring the agricultural community leads to a loss of knowledge that it took years to acquire and that is hard to replace.
We heard an example of adverse effect last week, when the representatives of the Canadian canola association appeared before the agriculture committee and stated that a number of farmers wanted to produce canola because prices were good.
What are the disadvantages? First, there is a drop in productivity, because some producers will not be familiar with this method—this is to be expected from those just starting out—because this does not work everywhere, and rotation may be less successful if not done properly.
A second disadvantage is that, if supply increases, prices go down. So what was a good crop becomes an average crop because the market is flooded. There is also an increase in disease because of greater crop concentration. Nobody is a winner.
The solution is several hundreds of millions of dollars in direct assistance based on farmers' needs. This is what we are calling “operation bail-out”. There are other things that can be done, however.
Speaking of other things, I think of the Canadian Pork Council's food bank idea. This does not get a lot of attention, but it should, because there are food shortages, for instance in Central America after Hurricane Mitch, in Russia, with an economic crisis threatening to spill over into adjoining countries, and in North Korea, which is in the throes of a famine. But all these countries, whatever their religion and customs, eat pork.
What led up to the crisis we are now experiencing? It came about not because of overproduction, but because of a lack of money among some of our clients, notably Asia and Russia. We must therefore not panic and cut back on production, or we will no longer be competitive.
Why stockpile when part of the world does not have enough to eat? Canada should get going and create a food bank. The United States took this step this year, contributing 50,000 tonnes of pork, and we could follow suit, with 10,000 tonnes of pork.
This is therefore not a chronic supply and demand problem because, if our clients had the money, demand would still be going up.
Finally, I would like to speak about Quebec's problem, which is different from that of the other provinces. The Quebec pork industry generates close to $4 billion in economic spinoffs annually and creates some 30,000 direct and indirect jobs, particularly in the regions. All hogs sold are slaughtered, and therefore undergo primary processing, in Quebec, rather than flooding abattoirs in the United States.
Producers participate in the farm income stabilization insurance program, which makes up the difference between the cost of production and market prices. For instance, if the present cost of production is $140 per 100 kilos and the market price is $67, the difference between $67 and $140 will be paid by the farm income stabilization insurance program.
In good years, when the price of pork is $225, obviously nobody receives any compensation payments from this program. It is a bank for when times are bad. Obviously, we did not expect times to be as bad as they are right now.
In this program, one third of the costs are paid by the producers themselves and the money the federal government puts into the net income stabilization account in other provinces goes directly, in our case, into the farm income stabilization insurance program. This is a major difference with the practice in other provinces.
The Government of Quebec has just put $30 million into the farm income stabilization insurance program to shore up the income of pork producers. It therefore expects to receive its fair share in the present crisis and to have that share cover the 1998 losses and any other losses as long as the crisis continues.
Quebec's farming sector is now undergoing a crisis of confidence. We were unfortunate, not to say unlucky, in the outcome of the scrapie crisis, and feel we did not receive our fair share of the compensation due us. I also resent some recent intrusions by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food in our jurisdiction.
I am thinking of the meeting held here in Ottawa, when a meeting was being held in Montreal with the same leaders as part of the WTO negotiations. The same thing is going to happen again this week during the meeting of the Union des producteurs agricoles, and tomorrow, for the visit in Washington, the fourth and fifth parties have been invited, but not the third. This leaves us bitter, worried and anxious, and this is the place to say so.
The meeting of the Union des producteurs agricoles, which consists of all representatives of farmers in Quebec, and is therefore the only organization representing them, has as its theme next week “Growing the future together”. How can we think about the future, when our farmers are unable to make a living in the present?
In conclusion, whatever the federal government's new plan is, it should take into account the Government of Quebec's initiative, and the particular nature of Quebec's farm safety net income program. The Bloc Quebecois will be opposed to the soon-to-be-announced emergency plan if it penalizes Quebec's producers, particularly our hog producers, in any way.
Our political party will also be opposed if the federal government favours one region over another in the kind of assistance it plans to provide. By this I mean that, by providing greater assistance for live hog producers than for producers of processed pork, the federal government would be favouring Ontario, which exports live hogs, over Quebec, which exports processed pork.
Whatever the outcome in Quebec today, the Bloc Quebecois will be very vigilant. A speedy response to this crisis is necessary.
In order to take into account the special character of Quebec and the fact that the government has already taken specific action to assist affected hog producers, various solutions could be considered, one of which might simply be to compensate the Government of Quebec for the assistance it decides to give hog producers.