Debates of Oct. 25th, 1999

Supply

[Leon Benoit, Reform, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the agriculture minister talks about his $1.5 billion. That figure really means nothing to farmers. The reality is that after more than a year since the minister promised quick action on the issue—and I remember him calling for quick action—only $72 million has been paid out in Saskatchewan, the province that was supposed to receive a bulk of the money.

The minister implies that it must be because farmers are not bright enough to apply for it or something. He implies that if farmers applied for it they would get it. He should give a little more credit to the farmers in western Canada. If he would understand farmers at all in western Canada he would know that they are well-educated people. They are very intelligent, hard working and they understand business. The minister gives no indication that he understands any of that.

[Larry McCormick, Liberal, Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox And Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will sharing my time with another member.

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. While my colleagues are, quite rightly, addressing what the government is doing for farmers, I will speak about our commitment to the rural communities that are so much a part of our great agri-food sector and many other sectors.

Rural Canada is the backbone of the country. Rural Canada is home to about one in three Canadians. It is the small towns, villages, outports and aboriginal communities that together form the backbone of the country. Rural communities may depend on fishing, tourism, manufacturing or resource based industries for employment, but in many parts of Canada agriculture is the cornerstone of the rural economy of an area.

As the farm goes so go the implement dealer, the seed and fertilizer merchant, the co-op, indeed the whole town, and often right back to the steel mills. Income earned on the farm ends up paying for the health, education, recreation and cultural services that healthy communities need. When the farm sector is in financial difficulty the whole community suffers.

Right now in a number of regions in Canada farm families are having financial problems. Some of them are brought on by local droughts, floods and other climatic problems. Other farm families are suffering because of the depressed prices caused by international trade issues. Individual farmers have no control over these problems.

As others in the House have mentioned, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food has been working within Canada to shore up our domestic farm safety net programs. He has been working on the international stage as well to get rid of the production distorting subsidies that are driving prices down. In addition, the federal government is providing support to the agricultural sector through its $60 million a year CARD fund, the Canadian adaptation and rural development fund. In so doing we are also supporting rural communities that depend on the sector.

Some of the support is helping farmers directly in acquiring new production and marketing techniques. Other support is helping develop management skills that can be transferred to off farm activities and contribute to the capacity of a community to engage in other economic activities beyond primary agriculture.

Farm safety programming and leadership skills developed for farming are examples of initiatives that provide significant benefits to world communities. The adaptation programming provided by CARD not only strengthens farms and food enterprises but enhances the role individuals in the agri-food sector play in their communities.

Beyond strictly agricultural related programs the federal framework for action in rural Canada has been developed, laying out an approach for the government to follow in its support of rural communities and the sectors that sustain them. This framework draws on the programs and services available through other federal departments and agencies. The government is looking at how we can bring together a range of activities to help the farm sector at this time of need.

In three consecutive throne speeches our government has stated its commitment to a rural Canada made up of vibrant communities and a sustainable resource base. With rural Canadians themselves in the lead we are building a rural Canada where residents have access to the tools, information and skills they need to make informed decisions and to take full advantage of the opportunities for personal community development, a rural Canada where citizens have access to science and technology, infrastructure and services to be full partners in Canada's knowledge based community and society.

Two weeks ago the governor general put some more flesh on commitments that will help bring rural Canada into the 21st century. First, the government will harness the energy and the knowledge of our youth, both rural and urban, to help connect rural and urban communities to the information highway. This is part of an overall commitment to a knowledge based economy where distance is less of a taboo. Distance will not be a barrier in the future. In the words of the governor general, technology enables urban and rural Canadians from the Atlantic to the west to the north to compete globally. In five years we will be the most connected nation in the world.

It is not just the high technology that will empower the economy of the new century. We will also need the physical infrastructure to move people and goods. The federal government will also work with the provinces and the private sector to develop and implement a five year plan to improve our infrastructure in small, remote and rural communities as well as in all cities. I am sure that very popular upcoming program will have the support of all members of the House.

These are very tangible commitments for Canadians living in rural remote communities. They fit into a pattern that the government has been following since it took office. We have steadily focused on making sure that rural Canadians share in the benefits of being part of this great country. After all, they helped make it great.

In August the Prime Minister appointed a Secretary of State for World Development. Again I thank the Prime Minister for the great vision he shared with us. This appointment serves as a strong signal of the importance the government attaches to rural Canada.

The government has also developed the rural lens to make sure the impact of policies and programs for rural Canadians has been given full consideration at all levels of the decision making process.

One size does not fit all when it comes to developing policy in Canada. The Secretary of State for Rural Development will have an opportunity with his cabinet colleagues to ensure the rural lens is being applied when policy discussions take place and the challenges and priorities of rural Canadians are understood and taken into account both in our current initiatives and in our long term planning.

Another important element of the government's work in rural Canada is to ensure rural Canadians see tangible results. We have already started to do some very specific work at the community level by introducing a number of pilot projects across the country. So far the Government of Canada has invested $3.8 million through Canadian rural partnership to initiate 68 pilot projects all over Canada. The CRP funds allowed project proponents to lever another $10 million from other federal departments and various other sources.

One project in Saskatchewan, for example, is aimed at developing and implementing an alternative to the current grain handling system to generate more returns for producers. The government is now assessing proposals for a second round of pilot projects. I am certain it will find other gems to enable rural Canadians to continue to make a valuable contribution to Canada's future successes.

Beyond the CRP pilot projects the Government of Canada has also made great strides in rural communities with the community access program, SchoolNet, Community Futures Development Centres and Health Canada's office of rural health where Dr. John Wooten is the chief executive director.

The government believes that the choice to live in rural Canada should not be a choice that results in reduced citizenship rights. Simply because people live in rural Canada does not mean they should have to put up with an inferior level of health care, an inferior level of social safety nets or inferior access to government services.

Rural Canada is the backbone of a large part of our economic wealth. It is a great place and full of great energy and ingenuity. The resources of the producers of fine food are shared with all Canadians. Healthy rural communities are essential to a healthy agricultural food sector. The government is working to build a strong foundation that will ensure the future of both the sector and rural Canada as a whole.

I call on all members of parliament to work with us to make the future as bright as it can possibly be. The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food has played a very important role. Members of the committee from all five parties have worked very hard and very well together. We have much left to do. I ask for all people to co-operate and work together.

[Howard Hilstrom, Reform, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the Liberal government member refers back to supply management. Who was it that negotiated up to 1993 article 11 and supply management, changing it from a quota system of imports to a tariff system designed to be reduced incrementally, eventually eliminating supply management?

Was that the Conservatives and Liberals, or was it the Reform Party that did that?

[Larry McCormick, Liberal, Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox And Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate any questions about supply management because I will personally defend it the very best I can. It is working. We all agree that we have the best quality of food and the safest supply of food in the world. It is less expensive today to buy milk or to buy butter in Canada than it is in the United States.

The government will fight to protect our producers. Yes, a previous government worked at it but Reform was not there showing support for farmers since supply management. I would ask its members to talk to their western colleagues in the supply management business.

Supply management is the only part of the agriculture sector that has been healthy each year in the past, and I ask the member to support it.

[Mark Muise, Progressive Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am bothered by one point. We hear the government say that it will provide $900 million for farmers. That sounds great, but we read documentation that says the problem with AIDA as it is currently designed is that it denies those benefits to many of the producers it was originally supposed to help.

As currently designed the AIDA program will not distribute the $900 million the federal government committed to farmers over the next two years. It is a fallacy to say that $900 million will be provided. It could be said that $60 billion will be provided, but if the program is designed so that no one receives it what good is it?

[Larry McCormick, Liberal, Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox And Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government's $900 million will be invested in rural Canada and I hope we can work toward investing more.

I notify the member and all members of the House that the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, which is well represented by members of the Reform Party and of the Conservative Party, invited the top officials of AIDA to appear before it, I believe, tomorrow morning. I am sure it will be a vigorous session. I look forward to asking some questions.

On Thursday of this week we have invited the ministers of agriculture for Saskatchewan and Manitoba to appear before us for a limited amount of time. We want to work with people. Commodity prices is a very serious situation, but the situation is worldwide. We are committed to the best we can do for rural Canada.

[Gerry Ritz, Reform, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make a comment on the member's glowing infomercial on the throne speech.

He talked about the government's commitment to rural communities. Everyone is to have Internet access, technology and all that wonderful stuff. I am wondering how rural families can make use of this technology and all the wonderful things the government is to deliver to them when all these towns end up being ghost towns.

[Larry McCormick, Liberal, Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox And Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think this would be the time to share one of my passions, which is spending my personal time chasing around the ghost towns of Canada for the last 30 years. I do not want to see any more ghost towns come about.

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan today there are communities that are very much at risk. That is why we invested money into community access sites so people could go to the libraries and the schools to get the information they need.

We want to do the very best we can for our people. I have spoken to many people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta this year. There is a crisis there that we need to work on. The government caucus has worked on it for several months. We look for the support of the House when we bring forward any new ideas.

[Bob Speller, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the debate this afternoon, although I am somewhat reluctant to get involved in it. From what I heard in the House today it has unfortunately turned into a partisan debate. Members on all sides seem to be saying that those on the other side do not understand the debate or do not care, that somehow it is just a western problem, or that the government is only looking at the problems of farmers in central Canada.

I come from an agricultural area, one of the richest and most diverse agricultural areas in Canada. It is in southwestern Ontario and I represent about 90% of tobacco farmers in the country. A number of my farm families and communities have been hurt because of the downturn in a certain commodity so I know somewhat from where I speak.

I say that also knowing there is a major problem in terms of this issue. Farm families across the west, also somewhat in central Canada and the east, are really feeling the pinch of some of the international problems in agriculture. I am not sure that I buy the argument totally that it is somehow all the government's fault or somehow the government is not standing up internationally at the trade table to protect Canadian farmers.

I recognize that some of the actions of countries around the world, in particular the Europe and United States to the south, with the use of exports subsidies have had a major impact on the prices of commodities. As a result they have had a major impact on what farm families are receiving for their products. That is only one of the problems.

There is also a problem of overproduction. It has always seemed funny to me that there can be overproduction in a world where people are starving, but it is said that there is overproduction of the products that people are willing to buy. There has been a problem over the last couple of years. It may seem funny to say this is a problem, but there has not been a major drought throughout the world and as a result there is overproduction. There is too much product on the market which has had an influence on the price.

We all know the impact the Asian financial crisis has had on different commodities. It certainly has also had a major impact on the price. The bottom line is that farmers across the country are not getting the amount of income from their products that they received in the past.

The government has responded in a number of ways. As was said earlier we have responded by sitting down with the provinces and the farm organizations and working out a package of aid for farmers. That was a year ago and I think there is some debate as to why more money has not actually gotten into the hands of farmers. That is a legitimate debate. Certainly people on all sides should sit down to figure out why it is that those farmers who have needed that money have not gotten the full amount of money they need.

It is not only a problem of getting the funds to the family farms at this time. There is an overall problem that the government, I agree, needs to resolve. We need to do it by sitting down with the affected parties and the provinces. It is not just a federal government problem. The federal government sat down with the provinces concerned and worked out AIDA. I would argue that maybe some of the provinces should have put in more money. That is a legitimate argument. I do not think it is totally the federal government's responsibility to do that. That is something which is being worked on. It is hoped that when the premiers come from western Canada in the next week to sit down and talk to the government, they will come up with more money and try to figure out a better way to get it into the hands of farmers immediately.

On the trade side, over the last couple of years we have sat down with the provinces, with the industry, with groups in western Canada and all throughout Canada to work out a trade position. We hope it will help address some of these concerns of export subsidies, particularly with the Europeans and the Americans.

We have a strong position which we will be taking to Seattle. We will sit down with other countries from around the world and try to get them to stop subsidizing their products so that Canadians can get better prices for their products. That is the right approach. We have pulled the agricultural commodity groups and the provinces together to put forward a strong and united front. I think that will work.

However, that will not solve a problem in the short term. Within the next few weeks the provinces and the federal government need to figure out how to get more money into the hands of farmers immediately.

What was said earlier mostly by my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, is that we should not have these trade organizations, that we should not have the WTO. I would argue frankly that this is a good example of why we need it.

Canada is a relatively small country in terms of our international trade. We face groups like the Japanese, the Europeans and the Americans who have large economies. It is difficult for us in these circumstances to sit down on a one to one basis and try to get them to stop their subsidies.

We can do that at international meetings, for example at the WTO around the table when we have like-minded countries that will stand up with Canada and tell the other countries that what they are doing is hurting our economies. We have had success in the past. We hope that over the next two or three years at the next round of negotiations we will get these countries to stop their direct subsidies which are hurting not only our grains and oilseeds farmers but farmers in other commodities as well.

I say sincerely to all Canadians who are listening that this is a problem for farm families. This is not a cyclical problem although as members have said, it always seems to come and go. It is more than that. All Canadians, particularly those who shop every day at the supermarket, need to know that Canadian farmers are not getting their fair share of the food dollar. Canadian farmers over the past number of years as a result of some international practices and other issues have been getting less and less for what they actually produce.

It is incumbent upon consumers in this country to get involved in this debate. If they want a Canadian agricultural system, if they want food that is safe and which is grown in Canada, they will have to get involved and know what the issues are. They should also be part of the solution.

[Gerry Ritz, Reform, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, if you will pardon the pun, the member was saying that Canada is small potatoes when it comes to international trade. He talked glowingly about needing to convince the Europeans and the Americans and to use incentives to convince them to give a darn about the situation of Canadian farmers.

Could he give us a brief outline of what those incentives would be if we are such a small player?

[Bob Speller, Liberal, Haldimand—Norfolk—Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member would have to agree that the Americans have an economy that is ten times the size of ours and the Japanese and the Europeans, all of them put together, are large players. The only way we can move some of these large players is to form with other groups. An example is the Cairns group.

In international meetings we sit down with a group like that and state our interests. It is in our interest to stop these international battles. When we go to certain meetings, whether it is the OECD, the Cairns group meetings or APEC, all the countries get together and say “Look, you have to stop this”.

That is one of the ways we can change international policy. There are not a lot of things. We cannot shoot missiles at each other, as some of the American friends have been saying. We have to sit down at those international meetings and get a coalition of countries to force the larger players to listen to what we are saying. That is one of the main things we can do.

We can also make sure that when we are giving these arguments we are not breaking international rules ourselves. That is one thing we also try to do.

Some may say that we are being Boy Scouts, that the other guys are cheating and that we should be cheating too. But we are trying to stop those people from cheating. Sometimes what is said to be cheating really is not. What a lot of Europeans and Americans are doing is well within the confines of what they have been able to do.

Unfortunately for us we are small and the Americans are fairly large. Many times they will take over at these meetings and set the agenda. One way to change that is to get out front first. That is what we have tried to do. That is why having a united front, having all the agriculture groups in Canada and the provinces all onside with a united position is the best way to make a difference internationally.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Reform, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased at some of the concluding remarks made by the member opposite. I was pleased to hear him acknowledge that there is a problem.

I would like to ask a question of the member opposite. It is a question people in my riding have been asking me. Why do the people in our cities not recognize the problem that exists in rural Canada? Let me explain and the member can have some time to formulate his answer.

Many of the people in Saskatchewan feel that little attention is paid to the farm crisis because they are only a small minority of Canadians and unless we can demonstrate somehow that this crisis on the farms impacts on the people in the cities, the government will do very little.

The question they want me to ask the government is: How can farmers get the message to all Canadians that our farmers are important to the country, that the problems they have are very severe and that something needs to be done?

Every time someone sits down to have a meal they thank God, but they should also thank a farmer. It affects everyone in their daily lives. How can we get the message to people in the cities to recognize this problem and assist us in the solution?

[Bob Speller, Liberal, Haldimand—Norfolk—Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one way we can do that is by what we are doing now. We debate the issue and make it more public in a non-partisan way to show Canadians that it is important.

One of our former colleagues, the hon. Ralph Ferguson, put out a study called “Compare the Share”. He took it upon himself as a member to try and put across to the consumers that farmers were not getting a fair share of the food dollar. Things like that help. Not only Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, but other government departments, including the rural secretariat and our department, are trying to make this more public. They are trying to make consumers aware that it is important to them that we have a solid agricultural industry in Canada. We will continue to do that.

[The Deputy Speaker]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Sackville—Mosquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, Native peoples; the hon. member for Vancouver East, Homelessness.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Reform, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, in western Canada in my constituency of Yorkton—Melville life on the farm has become very tough. Many farm families are struggling to get by.

We know that the incomes in Manitoba and Saskatchewan will drop by 98% this year. Projected net farm income in Saskatchewan for 1999 will be minus $48 million.

The Liberal government's lack of compassion and hard-hearted attitude is probably in part because it does not see the real people behind these statistics. It sees the numbers but it does not see the faces. We hear these numbers day after day, but we do not hear how these numbers are impacting the family farm.

I would like to take this opportunity in a somewhat different way than my colleagues, to pass along some of the comments that have been received in my office from families that are struggling to get through the worst crisis since the Great Depression. I only hope that the government will listen to these people and listen to their stories as I try to represent them here in the House.

The government talks about what it is doing for farmers but these comments will be clear evidence that it is not. Here is a producer in the northern part of my constituency explaining how discouraged farmers are these days:

I am having great difficulty meeting financial obligations. I am a young farmer who took over a small family farm. I have cattle and my wife works in town as well but it is very difficult and stressful trying to make ends meet with two young children. Maybe welfare is the answer?

Farmers are hardworking individuals who are proud of what they do. When farmers start talking about welfare, we know that life is getting very bad on the farm.

Here is a producer from Hudson Bay who is reeling from the effects of the farm income crisis:

Stress, financial uncertainty, family unrest. How can one plan for the future of their family when there doesn't appear to be any future.

There is another quote from a farmer in Kamsack, who said:

Myself and three brothers farm 6,000 acres. We keep 120 cows and feed 120 calves all winter. We work over 300 days a year, half of them are 16 hour days. I am having a hard time supporting a wife and two kids. I have no family life.

These are all real people with faces. This is not a faceless problem. The family is the one that ends up feeling the effects of the current farm income crisis. This government in its Speech from the Throne talked about how it is helping the children of this country. Saskatchewan farm families are not benefiting from the government's agenda.

I received a letter from the wife of a farmer in the Kamsack area the other day and it touched me deeply. I would like to share it with the House. It reads:

My husband has had to go out and get a job to put food on the table and support the family. He would get up at 4:00 a.m. and work on the field till 2:00 p.m. then go to work so he could provide for his family. He couldn't afford to take time off so some days he would work around the clock with only one or two hours of sleep. This has deteriorated his health with him losing a great deal of weight and he has become so withdrawn trying all possible ways to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I love him dearly for this but I want my husband back, not a walking time bomb.

I have had to take a job also and now have to leave my children without a mother figure. This is very hard and I cry every day that I leave, wondering if they are okay and if they need me. My baby cries as I leave and I feel terrible to be going, he needs me.

My daughter has been having trouble at school and she has a hard time adjusting to things around her. She hears the calls from collectors and wonders if we will be okay or not. She has complained of being sick so she can spend time with her parents who she misses.

My son has had to go see a therapist because he knows times are tough and he worries about all of us. He also complains of being sick so he can be near us. Many nights he would be sleeping at the foot of our bed. When asked why, he said I just wanted to see my dad.

We had an education fund for our children when the times were good but had to remove the money to pay the bills. Now will my children go to college? I don't know the answer.

We are all suffering. Is there anyone listening?

These kinds of stories really tug at our heartstrings and they put real faces to this crisis.

This letter could have come from a number of families that are trying to make a living on the farm. This is really impacting on children as well.

The focus should be to create the right environment where the family farm can prosper. Why is it so important to maintain the family farm? If the nation's food production is in the hands of a few corporate farmers, those corporate farmers will have control over the food supply and will have a great deal of power.

This is what a farmer from Carragana had to say:

Protect the family farms first. If you lose us you will have big organized corporations run by chemical and fertilizer companies who will be able to unionize globally. Then you can kiss your cheap food good-bye.

Maybe this is an answer to a question I posed earlier. How is this going to impact on people in the cities? Maybe if they realized that this is going to have a severe impact they would begin to take notice.

Another constituent said that the Liberals just cannot seem to see past their noses and that our children in the future are going to suffer because government is not handling our present crisis properly.

The agriculture minister talks about how the government has put $900 million into a farm aid package called AIDA. Very few qualify for support under this package. Why has it been so ineffective? I think it is because the program is designed for a drastic drop in income in 1998 when compared with farmers' previous three year average. The problem is that most farmers have not had a drastic drop in income.

A farmer from Canora put it best when he said:

I crunched some numbers in various scenarios and nobody in my neighbourhood qualified except for one 10,000 acre corporate farm. The only small family farms that qualify are the southern durum producers who have just come off three consecutive years of all time record high prices and should have some cash resource. The small to average farms in the black soil zone who have been hanging on by their fingernails the last three years will be left to slip into the hole even further.

It shows the basic unfairness of the way the government structured the program.

The government has to rework this AIDA package and make it so that farmers can get some support from the program. However, that is not the entire answer. Over the last 30 years government has mismanaged the entire agriculture sector, which is why a long term strategy has to be looked at. Otherwise we are just going to go from one crisis to the next. I would like to emphasize that a long term strategy is really needed.

A farmer from Foam Lake talked about the need for a long term solution. He said:

I think that in place of an emergency aid package the government should look at the longer term solutions like lowering freight rates which is the biggest expense. Check into prices of farm inputs. Why are the costs rising? Fuel expenses are a direct government responsibility and could be instantly lowered.

I have a lot more that I could read.

This has to be done immediately. I emphasize that. The long term solutions such as taxes on inputs can be dealt with immediately. The government has to look at user fees charged to farmers, foreign subsidies and the high cost of transportation.

This farm crisis has thousands of faces. Real people are being severely impacted by the drastic drop in income caused in part by the huge tax burden that is built right into a farmer's input costs. My comments today are to impress on the government that it is destroying people's livelihoods. Behind the statistics are many faces; faces of real people. The government deals with this issue as if it is faceless and just another problem. It is not.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague for a very excellent speech. He told some stories which I think are duplicated in all of our ridings. I have had heard of similar situations.

I had a phone call from a young married woman who, with her husband, is trying to make the family farm work, having taken it over from his father. It was really tough to pay the bills so she got a part time job to try to pay the farm bills. Lo and behold, unexpectedly this young lady found herself with child. She kept on working at her part time job, helping her husband as much as she could on the farm.

When the time came that she could no longer work because of her impending childbirth, she applied for employment insurance, to which every person in this country is entitled. This young lady was told that because she was part of a farm family and their income last year was x number of dollars she did not qualify. She was told that she would not get employment insurance. While everyone else is not asked how much money their husband made or how much their partner made when on maternity leave, here is a farm family trying to make ends meet, which needs employment insurance, and it is disqualified by the rules of the Liberal government. Those stories abound.

I really want to commend my colleague for bringing that dimension to this issue. It is exactly the kind of story we are hearing.

I wonder whether the member would like to enlarge somewhat on the kinds of programs that the Liberal government puts out that claim to be supportive of families, supportive of children, which in fact run exactly the opposite.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Reform, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, when I was giving my speech I did not intend it to be some partisan rant against the government. I feel that the government and many people across the country have to recognize this problem. I was trying to portray this as a crisis that is impacting on real people and has to be dealt with immediately.

My colleague makes a good point. Farmers are not treated the same as other people within society. They do not qualify for a lot of the farm programs that are available, nor do they qualify for a lot of the provincial programs that are available because of the nature of their business. Farmers would be the first to say “We do not want that. We want to be treated fairly, the same as everyone else”.

A lot of farmers do not pay a lot of income tax. One of my colleagues opposite said that if they were paying a lot of tax they would be making a lot of money. They are paying a lot of tax, but not income tax. They have property taxes. They have taxes built into all of their inputs. For example, when the government has a program by which it raises Canada pension plan premiums, or uses the employment insurance plan to raise money for whatever programs it wants to implement, farmers pay an inordinate amount of the rise in that tax. I am going to call them taxes because they are put into general revenues. They do not feel it is fair that they should have to pay that.

They pay in ways that the public does not realize. For example, they may have a capital cost on a machine they buy. Every company that employs someone pays Canada pension plan premiums. However, they really do not pay them. They pass that cost on in the price of the machine or whatever product they produce. Farmers have to purchase that. They have no choice as to whether they pay those Canada pension plan premiums that the company has to pay. Built into that particular price is a cost that farmers have no control over.

If the government makes a decision to raise Canada pension plan premiums or employment insurance premiums, farmers end up paying that because they cannot pass that cost on to anybody else. They are caught in the international marketplace. The prices they get for their product are dictated elsewhere. Other companies which subsidize their farmers dump their excess on the world market, depressing prices, and farmers cannot make a living.

Many Canadians do not realize the high amount of tax that farmers pay. The government collects fuel tax. Farmers pay a lot of tax on fuel, as well as fertilizer. Probably 50% of the cost of natural gas is tax. Certain fertilizers are made from natural gas. Therefore farmers pay that 50% tax which is built into the fertilizer they buy.

I was going to talk about child care and how farmers cannot access a lot of these programs. There are many government programs that farmers end up paying for and many Canadians do not realize that this is an unfair way of dealing with the situation.

[Gerry Ritz, Reform, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly with mixed emotions that I rise today to speak on behalf of my constituents of Battlefords—Lloydminster, Saskatchewan regarding the crisis in agriculture which is raging across this country, most critically in the west. In Saskatchewan and Manitoba we have seen incomes at an all time low. I say mixed emotions because my constituents are increasingly frustrated by all levels of government. Everybody takes a little blame for the seeming lack of understanding of the magnitude of this crisis.

They are angry with governments over the ineptitude they have displayed with their pat answers. It is always someone else's fault. If they wait a little longer the program will work. It has almost been a year and we are not seeing any results.

The federal agriculture minister has told farmers to quit or to walk away from farms that have been in a family for generations, or to walk away from years of blood, sweat and tears building and maintaining a dream that has been in a family forever. What advice to give to farmers who like to roll up their sleeves, get in there and solve problems. What an absolute insult. I have had farmers calling me, saying that this fellow just does not understand what is going on.

The harsh reality is that it is not just the farm families any more that are in trouble. It has gone past the farm gate. It is now encroaching into Main Street, Saskatchewan, into Manitoba and other parts of the country as well. It is affecting all of the agriculture related businesses, whether we are talking about inputs, farm fuel, fertilizer, chemicals or the seed companies. Everybody is starting to feel the pinch as their receivables escalate and skyrocket into numbers they have never seen before, with no end in sight.

I have received hundreds of calls over this past year at my constituency office and not just from farmers. It is escalating into the businesses supplying the farmers and their input costs. It is escalating into veterinarians supplying services and so on to cattle and pork producers. It has gone on to affect just about everybody out there in rural Canada.

Why is this? Why are we facing this crisis now? It has been building for a number of years. The main culprit was and continues to be an agriculture minister and his government that just will not move very far on this issue. He promised us a bankable program by last Christmas. That is almost 10 months ago and to date there are too few farmers qualifying for too few dollars to make any difference. We have heard numbers like $220 million out of a $15 billion program that has actually reached the farmers out there. It is just a little too late and not nearly enough dollars. Just in the nick of too late is what a lot of people are saying out there.

Farmers that I have talked to are averaging five to six months for a response from the complicated forms they have sent in. Their accountants are frustrated by filling out the forms to the best of their ability and coming up with a number that seems acceptable to everyone, only to have it rejected by the AIDA committee working with the NISA committee and the Revenue Canada committee. By the time the circle is done and they have jumped the hoops and hurdles that are tossed in front of them it is a bureaucratic nightmare. It goes on an on.

A good percentage of farmers that applied in April and May last year are still waiting to receive some money. They have received nothing. It has certainly been a problem.

Bankers in western Canada, to their credit, have been great. They have turned out loans and taken interest only payments on those loans to try to help farmers stay put. It is a bit of a different story when it comes to farm credit, that old boondoggle that was created federally years ago. They have been a little more hardhearted when it comes to tossing farmers off their ground.

This mess is compounded in Saskatchewan because our input costs have gone up with the demise of the Crow rate and with a provincial government that kind of let things slide a bit further than they should have done. We are seeing a tremendous disparity between what the net incomes of Saskatchewan farmers have bottomed out and our neighbouring province in Alberta. It is creating quite a controversy out there.

We have this crisis in agriculture. What it comes down to is that no one has a magic wand. What will we do about it? How can we address these issues? Everybody blames a different villain. We had the Asian flu a year ago and markets collapsed. We have European and American subsidies. We cut but they did not. They have actually increased their funding to farmers. We have to go to the WTO and the GATT negotiations with a little bigger stick.

We have a low dollar. All of our inputs are based on American currency. The fertilizer, fuel, chemicals, farm machinery, repairs, everything that comes out of the States and up here with 67 cent dollars buying it. Not totally. A lot of inputs are based on American money whether or not they are manufactured because there is a lot of that trade back and forth.

We have had both flood and drought in Saskatchewan, opposite ends of the scale, which has led to a lot of farmers getting little or no coverage by crop insurance because of that multiple year problem. Their premiums have gone sky high and the coverage they are able to get has gone way down. There is no way to add or make use of a NISA with negative margins. New farmers that do not have a three year average and so on do not qualify for any type of AIDA program.

A combination of low selling prices for agricultural commodities and escalating input costs have put people into jeopardy. There are six billion people in the world now. We had a big celebration a short time ago when the six billionth baby was born. There is a tremendous amount of hungry people out there. We grow great product here. It is safe. It is ready to go to market, ready to be used, but we cannot seem to find buyers for it even with a 67 cent dollar.

The Prime Minister said that a low dollar was great for trade. We do not see that stimulant adding to Canadian exporters. It just failed to deliver anything out there.

Another thing that has added to the situation is an agricultural system that has been in transition. Farmers followed the buzzwords of the government. They diversified, changed the way they did things, upgraded, worked the land a little differently and so on. They are extremely vulnerable at this time. A lot of people made those changes and were kind of caught in a catch 22 situation with payments to make on the new way of farming and no commodity prices to support it.

What can we do? What can governments do? In the short term I guess we have to prop up Canadian agriculture with a subsidy, cash in hand. It is the only way to get everybody back to the starting line. Canadian farmers are starting out a relay race 10 yards behind everybody else, so we have to give them some cash in their hands to get them back to the starting line.

We are also looking at tens of thousands of jobs that can be affected because agriculture is definitely a primary industry. It affects everybody on the input and on the purchasing sides. We need an aid program that delivers cash, not platitudes.

The program should be simplified. I know that goes against the grain of a lot of government bureaucracies that like to control everything to the end, but we have to simplify it. We have to get the money out there in a timely fashion. No more studies. No more excuses. Let us just get it done. We have Christmas coming up again and I would hate the agriculture minister to be the grinch two years in a row.

In the mid-term let us rethink government involvement in agriculture. Taxes on input costs are exorbitant, as the last member talked about. The major input cost of a lot of fertilizers is natural gas and 50% of that is taxes. Last year the fertilizer institute talked about 20% of its costs being government taxes on its product. All that comes off the bottom line of farmers.

We know what taxes on fuel amount to. Some $5 billion or $6 billion a year. A lot of that is coming right out of the pockets of farmers. These are not profit generated taxes, much like property tax. In Saskatchewan we have seen property taxes go up by 52% in the last little while and the bulk of that is paid by 57,000 farmers paying two-thirds of the property tax. We have to look at the way that is done. Interprovincial barriers to trade should be removed. Another $5 billion disappears from people in the west every year because of trade barriers that we have developed between the provinces.

In the longer term I guess we have to take a bigger stick to the next WTO and GATT negotiations. We cannot and should not tolerate unfair subsidy practices. They are killing us here at home. We have to go with more people, with a bigger group, to get our ideas across.

Let us get serious about implementing value added processing in the prairies. We have seen freedom of choice on marketing and delivery of our products being non-available to people. The Crow rate is gone but we did not see deregulation. This government and the provincial governments must look at all existing programs and propose changes and updates to and based on what is in the best interest of producers.

Farm families are hardy. They are good pioneer stock. They are adaptable folk. They have a proud heritage of standing up to the challenges, rolling up their sleeves and finding a solution. Let those of us in government at all levels be part of the solutions rather than a major part of the problems.

[Larry McCormick, Liberal, Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox And Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the province of Alberta recently put some more money into the program for its producers. It was very welcome.

I want to question the previous speaker and other members of the Reform Party, many of whom are from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, two great provinces, on whether they have asked their provincial governments to put more money into the program. As I said before, the top AIDA officials will be coming in front of our committee tomorrow and the ministers of agriculture for both Manitoba and Saskatchewan will be appearing before the House of Commons agriculture committee on Thursday.

I ask the member to continue to look for all possible support in his own provincial government areas so we can work with him.

[Gerry Ritz, Reform, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I certainly agree with him that part of the problem has been provincial. As I said in my speech, Saskatchewan is seeing huge disparities where Saskatchewan farmers have bottomed out compared to those of Alberta next door and even those of Manitoba, which is somewhere in the middle.

The Alberta government created a program called FIDP which not everyone loves. That is the nature of the beast with government programs. It certainly has held its farmers at a better level than those of Saskatchewan. We have been in a free-fall. Our crown corporations have been building kingdoms elsewhere in the world without staying at home and looking after the little guy. Our farmers have taken a hit at all levels and will continue to do so.

The premiers are coming here. That is great. They can talk and be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. I look forward to the interventions at committee stage.

The GRIP program disappeared out of Saskatchewan. The provincial government disappeared with about $140 million. The federal government saved about $230 million. All they have to do is put that money back and we would have about five times what the AIDA program will do for us.

Let us go back to the future. We do not have to reinvent anything. We saw just a short time ago what rural voters in Saskatchewan thought of the agriculture policies of the NDP government. They turfed the NDP government out of rural Saskatchewan, and rightly so. It was not listening. It has to get out there and start to help with the situation, not add to it. Rates for SaskTel, SaskPower and Sask Gas and Energy will go through the roof. It is compounding the problem and not helping us.

We have infrastructure that we can hardly afford to drive on. We have a seatbelts rule in the province just so we do not get bounced off the seat. It has nothing to do with safety. The situation we are facing in rural Saskatchewan is absolutely ridiculous. It just gets worse and worse.

All levels of government, municipal, provincial and federal, must get in there and work together. Let us forget the partisan crap. Let us all get in there and make it happen.

[Howard Hilstrom, Reform, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I can help out a bit. The former provincial government of Manitoba, the provincial PCs, gave out $50 an acre for the flooded natural disaster acreage. It was doing something. The NDP Government of Saskatchewan has done nothing in the way of extra money. We are waiting to see it come forward with money.

I have a quick question for the member. The banks have been fairly lenient with farmers in trying to help them out a little. Farm credit has been tough. I have also had calls that the Canadian Wheat Board is pressuring farmers over the cash advances they received in previous years. I see no leniency there.

Should the Canadian Wheat Board be more lenient on the cash advances than what it appears to be doing?

[Gerry Ritz, Reform, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Selkirk—Interlake for his intervention. I agree. Large corporations can follow the example of the banks and give farmers a break. There is no way that they can buy back land that is coming up this year with the low commodity prices. No one has had a chance to put any kind of cash reserves aside to make the down payment required to buy back the land.

Farmers do not want to lose any of their land. It is part of the viability of their operation. Whether one loses a quarter, five quarters or all five sections really does not matter. It is a chink in the armour. It is a chip away at the bottom of the dike and everything else will break loose from there.

We need to revisit that situation. We need to look long and hard at avenues that will allow farmers some breathing space to put a few nickels back in their jeans and make that down payment to stay viable.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate. I remind members that I represent a riding in downtown Toronto. There is not a single farm in my riding.

Having said that, I have always believed that national politicians should be sensitive to issues not just in our own riding or our own community but in every region of the country. Today is an example where this debate affects the people of my riding, not only in an indirect way but in a direct way.

I listened attentively to the member for Yorkton—Melville earlier. He described in very dramatic detail what was happening in his community. There were families with children facing the stress of watching their mothers and fathers working 80, 90 to 100 hour weeks and not making ends meet. He said that this was not a faceless problem, that these were real people.

He also asked one question I want to try to answer. What can we do to make the people who live in cities understand what is happening on the family farm? That was the question he asked.

As a downtown Toronto member of parliament I will attempt to answer that question. The basis of my answer comes from an experience that I had in the House 10 years ago when I sat in opposition. We had an agriculture critic from Lambton—Middlesex, the hon. Ralph Ferguson, who is a farmer to this day. He developed, at his own expense, a program entitled, “Compare the Share”. When I go into a store and buy a bag of cookies for $5, the program shows what the retailer gets, what the wholesaler gets and what the manufacturer gets. The family farm gets two pennies on that $5. On what we pay for a quart of milk the farmer's share is 11 cents. On a loaf of bread the family farmer gets six cents. When we buy 10 pounds of potatoes for $1.50 the farmer gets 12 to 15 cents.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Egmont.

As someone who has spent most of my life as a city person, I had never seen that package before. One day we decided to put up a display at my constituency office, which is on a very high profile street in downtown Toronto called the Danforth, showing the various shares on a quart of milk, a bag of cookies, a package of pasta and a loaf of bread. We then showed how much a farmer pays for his land, machinery and equipment.

I can tell the member for Yorkton—Melville that the city people were shocked. They had no idea the number of hours that farm families put in to get the two cents out of that $5 bag of cookies.

We kept the “Compare the Share” display for about a month to six weeks and then obviously we had to change it. That was one little section of a downtown area in Toronto, one of 22 sections.

The member asked what we could do to make city folk understand. We have to revive “Compare the Share”. Even for our own rural members in the House, there are probably a lot who would not be up to date on the current share that exists on a whole line of products.

We also have to go as far as re-examining the packaging that goes on products. Maybe we should not just be doing “Compare the Share” in our offices. Maybe we should use our power in the House of Commons to explore the notion of putting the approximate share that a farmer gets on all of the packaged goods. What is wrong with that?

The reality is that if we, in three, four or five years from now, lose the contribution of the family farm in the country, or if we discover four, five or six years from now that we no longer have any young people who want to work on the family farm because they are tired of working for $2 or $3 an hour, what will we do as a nation? Without the family farm, the quality of food, which today is second to none, and even in terms of consumer price is as competitive or more competitive than most places in the world, we will find ourselves stuck.

This is a good debate today but we must not treat it as a partisan debate. I know most members have not. Let us get together and do something constructive. I really believe the way to get the city people mobilized is to educate them about exactly what the farm family gets for every little contribution they make to the quality of life we have in our cities and in the whole country which is ranked number one in the world.

[Leon Benoit, Reform, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to see that the member from Toronto recognized the important contribution made by farmers to the food supply, which is safe and certainly among the best in the world. I was also pleased to hear his idea on how to get city people to recognize the input of farmers. I really appreciate that and think it is a good idea, but it still does not deal with these severe, critical problems that we have.

It does not deal with pushing European countries and putting pressure on Asian countries to remove or reduce their import restrictions. It does nothing to pressure the United States to reduce its unfair subsidies which make it very difficult for our farmers to compete because they are not competing on a level playing field. They are competing against just too many odds. Our farmers have become so efficient that they can compete against an awful lot of odds that one would think they just would not be able to deal with, but they can.

The Liberals have not dealt with the tax problem other than making it worse. They have not dealt with the restrictions on farmers to develop more options for markets except by making it worse. They have made things worse rather than improving them.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Broadview—Greenwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue to be constructive in the debate. I will not get diverted from where I am coming from. I feel passionate as a member of parliament that we should do something to help the family farm in the country, especially those that are in deep economic and psychological pain right now.

What I am saying is that if we educate a majority of people in the country on just how the family farm is getting screwed—I will put it in direct terms of getting screwed—my sense is they will understand that through education in a way that is sort of understandable. City folk are not going to understand. I heard everybody stand up here today to talk about AIDA. How many people in the city understand what AIDA is? I am trying to help here. Using that language is not the way to help.

The way to get city people mobilized to help the family farm in the country is to educate them on how they are getting screwed. Once that becomes a reality in their minds, then I think we can deal with all those other things very quickly.