Mr. Speaker, I really do not know how to express my disappointment at the response of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence to this issue. Either he misunderstood issues in the motion or he chose to ignore them almost totally.
It is wonderful news that the Department of National Defence and other departments are considering changes to the way disaster relief funding is provided to small businessmen and to farmers.
Another fundamental issue that he refused to even acknowledge was that there was a flood in northern Alberta and that the Alberta government applied for special funding for disaster relief for part time farmers and small business people. That request was denied to farmers and small business people in northern Alberta on two occasions, once the same summer and now this winter, for whatever reasons. I have to assume because they were in a different part of the country that special funding was provided. That was a sad day for Canadian unity, for equality and for fairness across the country. I was certainly disappointed.
While the flood in my part of the world was nowhere near the magnitude of the Saguenay or of the ice storm, certainly I know of farm families that were destroyed and are no longer families. I know of farmers who committed suicide because of the economic and personal hardship they suffered because of the disaster. To simply brush them off as not important and not worthy of the same kind of consideration as farmers in Ontario and Quebec is simply wrong, unfair and unworthy of a government that has responsibility for all Canadians.
I heard from the member of the Bloc Quebecois Party and others that there was some desire to have the issue go further. I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to refer this subject matter to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for further study and recommendations to the minister.