Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Prince Albert.
We are here today to debate a motion presented by the Conservative Party. The motion is quite wordy, as we might expect. The first part of the motion states that this government has failed to provide leadership, a long term vision and workable solutions for Canada's fishery and agriculture sectors. The motion could have stopped at “Canada” because the government has failed to provide the leadership and long term vision for all of Canada.
I will address my remarks to the crisis facing our agriculture producers. The mismanagement we have seen on both coasts in the fishery industry, the terrible turmoil that has been created by the Marshall decision and by some of the policies put in place by the government have certainly spilled over. Its lack of determination and will to go on to the world stage to fight the subsidies of the European Union and the protectionism of the Americans has created a huge problem in our agriculture sector right across the country.
There seems to be a genuine lack of understanding on the part of the government concerning this situation. It took us a long time, as the official opposition pounded away at the government, to get it to realize there was a problem and to bring that issue to the House. We did that through the form of a debate a year ago and it continues to be a huge problem.
The premiers of Saskatchewan and Manitoba came to Ottawa a week or so ago. They do not do that very often. They came to explain to the government that there is a huge crisis on the prairies in agriculture. When they got here they were presented with some new facts from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada saying that its new numbers indicate there is no crisis. Numbers are numbers.
Even if we use these numbers, the projections for the year 2000 for total net income have declined from the 1994-98 average, which was a $760 million return in Saskatchewan, to a projected number of $267 million for July 2000. That is taking the total net income of a province and chopping it to a third. How can we possibly exist in the agricultural industry, in agricultural provinces such as Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and others, when our net incomes are being cut to a third of what they were?
Getting past numbers, we are talking about the ability of our family farms to sustain their livelihood, to feed their families and to feed Canadians.
There was an article printed in the Minnedosa Tribune in September that gives an idea of what has happened to the business aspect of our family farms. There were comparisons made between 1974 and 1998 which relate everything back to bushels of grain. In 1974 10 bushels of grain would buy 200 gallons of gas. In 1998 155 bushels of grain would buy 200 gallons of gas. To buy a grain truck in 1974 cost 1,400 bushels. In 1998 16,000 bushels of grain bought the same truck. To buy a combine in 1974 cost 6,500 bushels of grain. In 1998 it cost 96,000 bushels. How are we supposed to maintain an agriculture industry with those kinds of figures?
Subsidies in Europe and protectionism in the United States have increased production so that the value of the crops produced is lower. Had we not had bumper crops for many areas in the farm sector this year things would be compounded severely. Thank goodness we had bumper crops for many areas because they will help us get through this terrible dip. However, it will not be a long term solution.
Another aspect of this, brought to my attention by one of my constituents a while ago, is the amount of money that is generated by selling beer. This goes on quite a bit but I just want to get this on the record. One bushel of malt barley sells for $2.15. That is what I sold my barley for this year. I sold it for feed, but it was $2.15 a bushel. That bushel of malt barley makes 333 bottles. A dozen beers sell for $17.50 a case, so 333 bottles would be 27 cases. That means a $485 return from one bushel of barley. At 50 bushels per acre, $24,000 per acre is being returned. On a quarter section of land, that is almost $4 million that has been created from the barley that the farmers get $2.15 a bushel for.
Let us look at taxes. The NDP member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys has put forward a motion that the GST collected on the sale of beer should be donated or directed toward National Hockey League clubs. The GST generated on the beer produced from one bushel is a little over $20 and he suggested that this money should go to National Hockey League teams and to multimillionaire players.
Would it not be nice if some of that money could be directed back to the farmer? Would it not be nice if we could take the $2.15 a bushel return to the farmer, take some of the GST and give it back to the farmer and tell him he will now get $5 a bushel? Instead, the hon. member suggested that it go to NHL hockey players.
The government has put in place the AIDA program. I have more figures. It is really interesting because some of the AIDA programs are being administered by the provinces and some are being administered by the federal government. The programs that are being administered by the provinces have processed and paid on 58% of the claims, whereas the ones administered by the federal government have only paid on 37% of the claims put in.
It is almost a joke that the programs being administered by the provinces are doing a better job of getting the money out to the farmers than the federal government is. Why that should be is beyond me, but I believe it is because of the bureaucracy. The federal government has trouble handling these situations, whereas the provinces are closer to the people and better able to administer and are doing a far better job at getting the money out to where it belongs.
Another issue I would like to put into this equation is the fuel tax that comes out of the prairies every year and goes into the federal treasury and does not come back.
In fiscal year 1998-99 the federal government collected approximately $4.4 billion in transportation fuel taxes. Federal expenditures on road infrastructure in the same year are estimated at $198 million. That is a nickel back for every dollar it collects in fuel tax to put into the roads. There is another area where the government could do something to improve the roads. Maybe it should not take that money if it will not put it into roads. It should leave it in the pockets of the producers.
A number of things need to be done to address the problems in the agriculture sector. The first thing we need to do is to use the federal safety net programs to support Canadian food producers who are struggling and cannot make ends meet on a short term basis as a result of natural hazards or whatever. We need to have a program in place to get people through those times.
We need to have an AIDA program that works, that gets the money out to the people and gets it to where the hurt is. The government has failed to fulfil its promise to get those funds delivered.
We need to look at the root causes of the income crisis. We need to look at safety net programs that work and are in place to take care of these crises.
We need to look at reducing the European and U.S. subsidies. We need to go to the next round of WTO and NAFTA talks, which is happening this month, to fight for our farmers. We need to beat those subsidies down so that we are in a position to help our producers. We cannot as a country support the level of subsidy that these other countries do, so our method of fighting that has to get tougher at the negotiating table.