Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake, the Reform critic for international trade—for agriculture, I am sorry, although I know he has a keen interest in international trade—to have sponsored this debate and raised the matter of this severe emergency for western Canadian farmers.
When I rise to debate I usually say how happy I am to engage in the debate, but unfortunately I cannot say that today.
I am not happy at all. I am very disturbed. I am very frustrated because we have seen this cycle over and over again.
I think it is important that we have some historical background in order to put this into some kind of perspective. My background is agriculture. We have a farm in Alberta. I have been farming for over 30 years. In my other life I also was the chairman of a canola crushing plant that had international sales, especially to Japan. We faced this issue of labour management problems and the fact that we could not deliver our product on time on a number of occasions.
It was a matter of debate with the Chinese and Japanese buyers of our product when we were in the crushing business. It has hurt us very severely in the past. It has hurt us because Canada has not been able to get our product to port on time. It has hurt our international reputation and it hurt us financially in the canola crushing industry when I was there.
I first started farming in 1968. This issue has been with us for a long time, labour-management problems at the ports. There is something like 20 labour management units that have the ability to shut us down at any one time and we have seen all kinds of disruption in the past.
I want to tell a story about going to Vancouver with a group of farmers to tour the Alberta Wheat Pool terminal. That was back in the early 1970s. We flew to Vancouver and we were to have a look at the terminal in operation, our terminal. We owned it. It was a co-op. What happened? There was a strike.
It is the exact same situation we have today. Guess who was on strike? It was the official weighers and samplers. There were only five at the Alberta Wheat Pool terminal. They shut that terminal down.
It was raining, as it often does in Vancouver in the winter. The five people were sitting in a car with their pickets leaning up against the car. They shut down the terminal and backed up grain right back to the farm gate. The reason? Other unions would not cross that picket line.
This goes on and on. What government was in power at the time? The same government. The same problems we see today. Nothing has changed. Yet it has had a lot of opportunities to do that. Does it really care at all about what happens to farmers in Western Canada? I have to think not.
In my riding agriculture is the biggest industry. We have oil and gas industries. We have a very strong forestry sector. The bottom line is that agriculture is there day in and day out. It pays the bills. When we get disruptions in the grain handling system we pay very dearly because over 80% of what we produce is shipped out of the country.
A lot of it is shipped out of the port of Vancouver and when that goes down, we all go down and we pay very dearly. There was over $60 million last year in demurrage charges. Who pays it? It backs up to the farmers. They pay it. Ye, it is beyond their control to do anything about it.
They are looking for leadership from government. It is one of the reasons I got involved in running for parliament. We are simply not getting it. It is a problem I am very concerned about.
My role is the critic for the Reform Party for international trade. The international trade committee is doing a study now about what we should be trying to negotiate for Canada at the upcoming round of the World Trade Organization, the hearings in the so-called millennium round.
What good does it do getting market access for our products if we cannot deliver them? It is frustrating beyond belief. We are there trying to open up access into other markets, and here we are stymied time and time again.
In the 1970s we had the second worst labour record to Italy. Maybe it has improved in some areas but not in the area of grain handling.
We had this problem before us last year. We were debating Bill C-19. The Liberals told us all would be well and good. They were to put in a provision in the labour bill that would allow the terminals to keep on operating if there was a strike for 72 hours to load the ships.
We faced a great deal of pressure. I know I did in my riding from some of the grain companies and farmers who were saying why not support that bill. We said it is a half baked measure which will come back to bite us. That is exactly what has happened.
We said “Unless you address the whole issue of labour management problems and some new process for handling that, you have not solved anything. So you have loaded that one ship out on the 72 hours. Unless you address the whole 20-some labour management units that are involved with some kind of process to resolve the longstanding situation we have had in this area of strife and crisis, we really have not done anything at all”.
When we were at that port in Vancouver, the Alberta Wheat Pool terminal at the time, I talked to a couple of workers from the grain handlers who were sitting in the terminal doing nothing except for providing security. That was in the early 1970s. The same weighers and samplers were on strike at that time. The grain handlers have a union of their own.
I talked to a grain handler and said that when we got past the situation with the weighers, everything would be running smoothly and we would be able to load out the grain. He said: “I am not so sure. We have a two year contract. We were not able to settle it until just a couple of months ago. Now there is only about a year left and we will probably be going on strike again”. It is not just them. It is the railway system workers, the labour management units for the stevedores, and on and on.
We simply have to move to a better system. What is the use of trying to get market access? What is the use of trying to put $1.4 billion into emergency aid for farmers in the prairies if all we really need to do is leave some money in their pockets by lower taxes and allow for a system that is effective to get our product to market on time so we can continue to have a good reputation?
I suggest there has been a lot of distress in the farm industry in the last several years. The Asian flu was just the last part of that. We know commodity prices are off very badly. Farmers are hurting. Western Canadian farmers are hurting. We also have the severe subsidy-tariff situation, especially in the European Union which spent $72 billion on agriculture subsidies last year, effectively freezing us out of those markets.
It gets even worse. It freezes us out of the European Union markets but it overproduces because it is getting $10 a bushel for wheat. What does it do with that overproduction? It dumps it on the world market at fire sale prices. Not only can we not access the markets in the 15 countries that are members of the European Union but we are frozen out of markets in third countries because we face this unfair competition.
What is this government doing about it? What are its priorities? It does not seem to be much in the area of agriculture in terms of trade to try to open up those markets. It tells us it has to have this so-called balanced position in Canadian agriculture. We cannot ask for market access for grain, oilseed and beef, those very industries that are essentially subsidy and tariff free, because we have to be careful on the other side. We might get hit on our supply-management, the same supply-management that enjoys 300% tariffs on lots of our products, butter for example, against products coming into Canada. The so-called manage position is where the Liberals are. They want to ride the fence on everything.
Where are the Liberals' priorities? Where are their priorities these days on solving this strike? I do not see them. I see them concentrating on things like gun registration with some $200 million already in that situation, blowing it out their ears. Twenty years from now what will we have from gun registration? People will say what a useless exercise.
What are their other priorities? Subsidizing Bombardier with $1.2 billion over the last 10 years, and it goes on and on. Bill C-55 is on protecting magazine publishers. Rogers cable, one of the biggest importers of American culture into Canada, has a division called Maclean Hunter which cannot function without that protection. That is a real top priority for the Liberal government, protecting the subsidized protected industries.
However, when it comes to fighting for our farmers for market access, we cannot touch that, it is too hot. When it comes to trying to solve some labour-management problems that have been with us for over 30 years, we will leave that alone. We cannot do anything there. We would not want to put in final offer arbitration such as has been suggested by our member for Wetaskiwin. It is a very good suggestion in order to move along a process that is stagnated very badly.
I see some movement coming. The President of the Treasury Board tonight telegraphed his position, back to work legislation. Part of the reason was in what he said. There were some real difficulties at the Dorval airport the other day. PSAC workers blocked the Dorval airport. Some people had to walk a whole kilometre. They had to walk around and go a whole kilometre on the tarmac to get to their plane.
Do not worry about the farmers who are losing millions and millions of dollars in demurrage and lost sales, disrupting a $6 billion industry. That is not that important but when it comes to disrupting travel at Dorval airport, that is pretty important.
I think we see the writing on the wall. We will see back to work legislation but what has that solved? Yes, there is a band-aid that will order these people back to work but why can they not engage in some new thinking about the whole labour management process? We have to move beyond this. We cannot afford it.
I suggest that until the government is prepared to do that we will see a whole series of band-aids into the future and I do not think that is good enough.