Mr. Speaker, we are back on your favourite topic again, agriculture. It is very important to me as well. It is very good to see you hanging on every word being said tonight.
We as Reformers are raising this issue in this emergency debate. The whole point of my speech is that innocent third parties such as the farmers are being hurt by the strike that they have no control over.
Farmers on the prairies are hurting already. Now they are being hurt terribly by this. The government must accept responsibility for allowing this situation to develop time after time. We have done this before, déjà vu.
This situation must not continue. We have proposed solutions for several years such as final offer arbitration. We cannot blame any one party or person for all the problems. Some blame the problems farmers are experiencing on the railways, the Canadian Wheat Board, the grain companies or the unions.
The buck stops with government. It could have put in place a solution. It did not do this. Government has the power to bring all the players in the game together to solve our grain handling and transportation problems.
It may not look like it on the outside but on the inside I am jumping up and down and screaming. We have done this over and over. There is a solution and we are not solving the problem. Something must be done to solve the grain handling and transportation problems we are experiencing on the prairies.
People have trouble hearing me when I get too excited therefore I will remain calm in my speech. Really I cannot emphasize enough how important this is to my constituents.
I will be dropping a bombshell a little later in my speech, so members can be waiting for that. The minister responsible for the Treasury Board said that this strike will begin to cause problems for the grain trade on the prairies. I could hardly believe my ears. They have been feeling the impact for a month. I made some phone calls in my constituency today. My staff in Yorkton contacted various people.
Here is what is happening today. In Foam Lake, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool says the calls for the Canadian Wheat Board grains have been completely stopped. For the last two weeks they have not accepted any board grains. Their elevator is full. The result is that producers are taking their grain to other elevators like the ConAgra in Yorkton. He estimates this west coast strike is costing his elevator 100 tonnes a day. They cannot move it. That is happening already.
The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in Sturgis has not loaded a single rail car since the start of January. He says the strike means there is no way this elevator will be able to receive any grain cars.
They move most of their grain out of the elevator by truck now. However, with the road restrictions coming up very shortly they will not have this option. The big trucks will not be able to haul grain on the grid roads. This means a complete shutdown of the operation unless they can get some rail cars.
In Kelvington the United Grain Growers said its contract calls and car allocations slowly declined over the last couple of weeks. Canadian Wheat Board grains have basically ground to a halt.
They are not moving any canola. It goes to the west coast and the strike has stopped sales altogether. He adds that they have only 19 rail cars filled from their elevator since January. They have moved 6,000 tonnes less grain than they did at this time last year. This is all in relation to the slowdown in the movement of grain and the strike that is occurring right now.
Many people listening across Canada do not realize the ramifications of this strike, how far down the line the impact goes when this occurs at the west coast.
Here is a story of a trucker from Invermay in my riding who had a week's worth of hauling grain lined up. Everything from oats, barley, wheat and canola were all picked up at farmers' yards and shipped to local elevators. The elevators have now called the farmers and this trucker has been told to cancel his week's worth of work.
The elevators do not have the room to take all the grain he has to haul. This, however, has more than just the implication of a lost work week. This trucker uses a large Super-Bee truck and will soon not be able to haul this unit on secondary and grid roads as a result of the road restrictions which come on every spring. This means the farmers who want to get rid of their grain will have to do so through smaller tandem trucks and probably with half loads. It costs producers a fortune to truck small amounts of grain back and forth from the farm to the elevator. The large trucking companies have lost more than a week's worth of work because they will be off the road soon and will have no income for the next couple of weeks.
This grain strike is not just affecting farmers. It is affecting transportation and many other people. I hope the government is listening and will act immediately. I am very upset the government does not resolve the problem of grain movement stoppages. There are no ministers here right now—