Mr. Speaker, I will direct my remarks to the fourth paragraph of today's motion which reads in part:
That the government should take action to remedy its over-zealous and irresponsible pursuit of greater trade liberalization, which has caused extreme hardship for Canadian farmers,
This opposition motion takes the extremely misguided position that trade is bad for Canadian farmers; that it has caused, in other words, extreme hardship for our producers. It is that supposition that I would like to tackle during my time here today.
In fact, trade, rather than creating an extreme hardship, is the very cornerstone on which Canada's agricultural economy and the nation's economy overall has developed and thrived. We have an agriculture industry in the country that generated some $95 billion in domestic sales last year and over $22.5 billion in exports to markets around the world.
This is a record export performance. I might add that these sales were made in 1998, a year when financial markets were in chaos and commodity prices were driven down. However, because of our access to markets around the globe, Canada's agrifood industry was able to actually improve on its export performance of 1997, which, incidentally, was also a record-breaking year.
This export success obviously plays no small part in helping to build a strong agricultural industry, an industry that contributes more than 8% of the country's gross domestic product, an industry that provides jobs for nearly one in seven people, from the farmer in the field to the person in the processing plant, to the research scientist who is constantly looking for ways to improve our crops and develop new crops that the world will be glad to buy from us. It is also the industry which provides jobs for over one-half of Canada's young people entering the workforce for the first time.
Trade is good for our agricultural industry. We have a small population and we have a large agricultural output. We must trade in order to survive.
A recent analysis by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada indicates that for every billion dollar increase in agrifood exports, net cash income on the farm can be expected to rise somewhere between $250 million to $310 million.
Some of my colleagues on the other side would argue that is not good enough. They seem to think that agricultural trade is only good if the benefits to the producer are dollar for dollar. In other words, a billion dollar increase in agricultural trade has to bring a billion dollars back to the primary producers or else we should just forget it and that we should forget trying to increase trade.
That is just silly. It is silly because that billion dollar increase will lead to something like $250 million or more of additional money in farmers' pockets. They can reinvest that money in their operations. They can use it to buy a new combine or to upgrade and expand their barns. When they do that, the benefits are passed on.
When a livestock producer decides to expand his capacity, he puts money into the hands of the local farm equipment dealer and his veterinarian. Maybe he will pay his grain-growing neighbour down the road to supply him with some additional feed. Pretty soon everybody is feeling the effects all because of trade.
Meanwhile, beyond the primary producer level, the benefits of that $1 billion increase in trade go to other players in the agrifood system. More and more of Canada's agrifood exports are value-added. Farmers' bulk products are processed and prepared for the direct-to-consumer market, a highly valuable market. This means some of that $1 billion in exports goes to food manufacturers, processors and transporters who also create jobs and economic growth for our country.
The benefits of trade are very clear and that is why the federal government does all it can to expand our trade opportunities. Since Canada started liberalizing trade with its partners around the world, our exports have exploded. In the last decade, as we have pursued freer trade with partners all over the globe, our exports to the world have more than doubled.
In North America alone, our exports have nearly quadrupled in the last 10 years, with more than $13 billion worth of agrifood products going to Mexico and the United States last year. If anyone thinks we would have made these kinds of gains without liberalization, they are dead wrong.
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Ottawa—Vanier.
We have been trying to increase our exports to the emerging markets of the Asia-Pacific countries as well. Now, because of what happened in some financial markets in the last year or so and because of some phenomenally good harvests around the world, I admit some of these Asian markets have dropped off a bit. However, we have made gains and we have a foothold in those markets now. As they evolve, we will be able to take advantage of the foothold and build on it.
We would not have made these gains without making efforts to liberalize trade. We free up trade by working with our partners and various associations like the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, APEC, or WTO, or NAFTA. We build freer and fairer trade when we put more dollars into producers' products and into rural businesses at home.
Because of our efforts on the trade front, Canada has made progress in a number of areas over the last year or two. We have worked with the European Union to get them to modify their grain import regime and reduce the duties on some grades of Canadian durum wheat.
We have gained access to the Japanese market for our tomatoes by working with officials there to get them to reduce their extremely time consuming approval process which required that each and every tomato variety had to be tested separately for pest risk.
We were successful in persuading Thai officials to reduce their tariffs on canola meal and alfalfa products earlier this year, opening a sizeable market for Canadian feed exports.
As a result of our efforts in Korea, the Korean government announced earlier this year that its applied tariff on canola would be reduced from 15% to 10%.
In Indonesia, agriculture tariffs were reduced to a maximum of 5% on all food products.
In the Philippines, sanitary import protocols were maintained or updated to ensure we had continued market access for Canadian pork, beef, poultry and other agricultural items like bovine embryos.
Canada also gained access to the Vietnam market for grain and fertilizers.
All this is trade progress that leads to a stronger agrifood industry here in Canada.
No, trade liberalization is not the cause of Canadian farmers' problems. On the contrary, trade is the answer. On average, across the country, about half of farm gate income comes from trade. On the prairies, trade is responsible for the majority of producer income.
Members should think for a moment about what would have happened to our prairie provinces if they had no international markets where they could sell their wheat and canola and beef. They would not be better off. Far from it. It is international trade that sustains our agricultural regions and the Government of Canada is working to improve our trade opportunities all the time. We are doing it by mounting trade missions, by finding ways to build partnerships and alliances around the world and by working with like-minded countries to get better, fairer and more enforceable trade rules that will assist our producers.
We want to increase trade, not reduce it. We are working with our producers, our processors and our counterparts in governments at other levels to ensure we reap the benefits.