Maybe the hon. member who is mouthing off on that side of the House would like to talk about the 18 or 20 suicides that have occurred in the last few weeks in those western provinces. Maybe he would like to mouth off about that and talk about how insignificant what I am saying is or how we are trying to support our agricultural industry and our farmers in the west.
One thing the Liberal government is very good at is sitting in the House of Commons and criticizing this side of the House anytime we may wish to oppose its methods or its ways of handling any kind of a crisis.
The government has not prepared for this kind of an issue. It has not made any preparation at all except to put a pile of money on the table under a program that requires an absolute genius accountant to fill out the forms.
I have gone over these forms with several farmers in my riding and they are wondering what in the world they are to do with them. The farmers have made an effort. Some of them have spent $1,600 to $1,700 to hire an accountant to fill in the form and mail it off, only to be rejected. I should not say they were all rejected, because in the brilliance of the Liberal government, I know of two farmers who received aid under the AIDA program. One farmer received $9.05 and another received $3.60. Nobody really understands what this program is all about.
I fail to understand why year after year we have to contend with our products on the west coast not moving. I wonder if the Liberal government is aware that many of the people who we do our marketing with, in particular Japan, do a great deal of business with farmers in my riding. Farmers ship various types of goods in containers to Japan but Japan does not buy goods to store and save for a rainy day. It does not have a storage system. It buys on a continual basis. In other words, the flow of these products must happen regularly and without a stoppage of any kind.
The Japanese people sent a document to my office indicating that they were getting very tired of our country constantly stopping the necessary flow of billions of dollars worth of goods that we market. We are not satisfying our people on the other end because we do not have a government that recognizes the importance of keeping agricultural produce flowing to other parts of the world and keeping the markets alive and well.
Instead, we go through motions year after year in the House to try to put an end to work stoppages, lockouts or whatever the case might be in order to get the ships loaded and the produce out. Instead of addressing the issue as we should have done year after year, for at least 20 years that I know of, we have to deal with it on an as-it-happens basis. It continually hurts us. We are now at the point where ships flag into the country before ever arriving at port wanting to know exactly what the situation is because they do not want to arrive if there is going to be any kind of stoppage.
We are not protecting the industry at all. We do not have their best interests at heart when we allow this to continually happen year after year. It is on record.
Last week, Lynn Hardy, one of my constituents from Carstairs, contacted my office with some very interesting information. During a conversation with a Statistics Canada employee, her husband asked the individual about statistics being touted by both the Prime Minister and the agricultural minister as proof that there is not a farm crisis. Mr. Hardy hoped to learn the origin of these stats.
As it turned out, the employee said that they were very disappointed in the Prime Minister and the agricultural minister for using these stats since they dated back to 1997 and obviously had nothing to do with today's crisis. For those who do not remember, 1997 was a little better than average year, not to mention that it was three years ago.
When will the Liberal government wake up and realize that first, it is 1999 almost 2000, and second, there is a farm crisis? These bogus excuses and these dated stats can no longer be used to deny our farmers the much needed help that they need at this time of crisis.
The very first thing the Liberal government must do is recognize that the agricultural and food industries are the most important industries in the land. That would really be a good start.
Many farmers in my riding would like to know if some people are turning down some of the things they voted on. I think of Bill C-4 of a year or so ago when the government was adamant it was doing the right thing and the farmers cried out that it was not doing the right thing.
Why are they being ignored? They would like to know why their voices are being ignored by the government. My only answer was that 70 or 80 highfalutin Bay Street lawyers do not know what they are doing and vote according to the wishes of their leader instead of the wishes of the farming industry. That is the only solution I could come up with.
Why have they not sent the Prime Minister, the agriculture minister and the strongest contingent of cabinet ministers to the WTO talks? They should go their with a firm hand demanding a level playing field in the agricultural market. Why do we send all the chief bureaucrats and all the do-little nothings in these departments to handle the major task of getting a message out that we care and are concerned about our farmers?
They sent a committee to the west to find out why Liberals are not getting much support there. They did not listen very well. We gave about a billions reasons when it came to wasteful spending. We gave another billion reasons on overtaxation. The final reason we gave them, in the words of farmers, was that obviously we had a government that just did not care. I would like to see that attitude changed.