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.