Mr. Speaker, when I was interrupted by question period I was relating to the House the potential magnitude of the Palliser Grain receivership disaster and I was trying to enlighten some members.
I know from the heckling that constantly comes every time I stand to speak in this Chamber that there are some members across the way who do not wish to be enlightened about what farmers are saying in Saskatchewan, Alberta or anywhere else for that matter. They have a problem with it.
I was relating the story about the Saskatchewan forum which was hosted by the eight Reform MPs from that province. I was approached in my role as the official opposition agriculture critic. I was approached by a number of farmers who had concerns about the Palliser Grain Company going into receivership.
Some of these farmers are facing very substantial losses if they are not covered by the existing bond or if they are not covered by a trust fund that has been set up for some deferred payments and which we have scanty details about.
I would like to explain the process for deferred payments. When farmers deliver their product—and this applies to special crops as well as other commodities—they can defer payment to sometime in the future. It helps them to regulate their cash flow and even it out in different parts of the year.
My understanding is that under the present regulations, in order to be covered, the maximum amount of time a farmer can have his product stored with a company is 90 days. Then they have up to 30 days to cash the cheque. They basically have 120 days in which to get paid. If they do not fall within that framework of 120 days, in other words, if their product has been in storage for longer than that period of time, when a company goes into receivership it is questionable whether they will receive remuneration for their stored products.
Furthermore, my understanding is that government changed the rules in or about August 1995. Prior to that farmers were covered up to one year if they had products stored with a company. That was changed and shortened to 120 days.
It brings to light this issue: Is the onus entirely on the farmer to ensure that when he sells his product to a company he is going to be covered in this type of situation? Or is there some responsibility on the part of government to ensure that the farmer is made aware that these types of changes have taken place or that there is some increased risk involved with deferring payment?
It brings to light the whole issue of the buyer beware type of scenario. In this case we have the situation of seller beware, where the farmer has to recognize the extent of the risk he is taking.
In fairness to the farmers in the Palliser Grain situation, it is quite likely a lot of them did not understand that the insurance bond which Palliser Grain was required under legislation to carry did not cover them past the 120 days. It is certainly my hope and I believe the hope of all members that the issue can be resolved favourably for the farmers and that the trust fund which was set up for deferred payments will be sufficient to cover all those farmers who had product on storage with Palliser.
The reason why I am relaying this story is directly linked to one of the major reasons for Bill C-26, the whole issue of grain buyers and grain buying companies carrying insurance against the disaster of having gone broke or having gone into receivership, and whether the responsibility should rest entirely with the farmers or if there is some inherent responsibility on the part of government to carry some of that risk.
One of the points I made during my speech is that under the present way that Bill C-26 is structured there will be no competition in providing that insurance. The farmers who have approached me are quite concerned about the future risk of premiums being increased. They are also concerned about the fact that it is a levy. Although the parliamentary secretary said that it is voluntary, there are hoops that the farmer has to jump through. He has to wait until the end of the year to opt out. He has to maintain his records to see exactly how much levy he has paid. He then has to total this up and request that money he paid into the levy fund from the governing body.
While it is technically true that it is a voluntary process, it is, as I said in my speech, really negative option billing. The farmer has no choice because it is deducted off his cheque when he actually sells his product to the special grains buying agent.
I would just like to sum up by saying that the official opposition is constantly in a bit of a quandary when it comes to supporting or opposing certain pieces of legislation. All Canadians recognize that most of the legislation that is placed before this House has certain good merits to it. However, we are constantly having to decide whether it is more than 50% good or more than 50% bad and what position we should take.
I do not have the exact numbers but I think in the last Parliament, which was the first Parliament for me as a member of Parliament, the Reform Party supported the government's legislation about half the time. It may be a little more or a little less, but I think it was half the time. I believe we ended up supporting about half the bills that came through this place.
In this case, as I relayed in my opening remarks on Bill C-26, we are caught in the middle of this at this point in time. We are not sure whether to support it right now. There are some good things in it. As the parliamentary secretary indicated in his remarks, farmers, grain buyers and other stakeholders in the industry have been requesting this for quite some time. Whether this is the exact approach to take we do not know at this point. We are certainly interested in getting a lot more feedback as we go through the process.
Some of these comments which I have quoted from the various organizations and farmers run exactly opposite to each other but I wanted to demonstrate to members of this House that we as parliamentarians have our work cut out for us with Bill C-26. The feedback represents only a fraction of the input that we can expect to receive on this legislation. Yet it is already obvious that there is a great deal of skilful legislative work required.
We will need to carefully listen, thoroughly examine, look for compromise and, in the end, be able to tell farmers that we have done our jobs and done our jobs well.
This is what I want to tell the farmers when Bill C-26 completes its journey through the parliamentary process. I hope this government does not make that effort a futile one.