Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague from Peace River said, it is the same money. They just keep announcing it over and over again.
Farmers are not fooled. One of the reasons that the official opposition, the Reform Party of Canada, launched its own series of grassroots agricultural meetings across western Canada was to get input from farmers themselves at small townhall meetings, not by blowing into Regina, Saskatoon or Calgary and talking to a select group of witnesses who appear before the standing committee. We wanted to go out and talk directly to the producers who were most affected by the government's lack of agricultural policy.
My colleagues, who are agricultural critics for the official opposition, instituted a plan to travel across western Canada and set up meetings called assistance for struggling agricultural producers, ASAP. The acronym could also be “as soon as possible”. As soon as possible we need to help farmers in Canada. It is important for Canadians to ask themselves a very serious question at this juncture of our history: Do we want to have a viable agricultural industry in Canada? If the answer to that is yes, and I suspect it is, we want a healthy and secure supply of food in our nation, then we must give farmers the support that is necessary and the certainty to conduct their business.
We have been holding these meetings all across western Canada. By the time they are done, around mid-March, my colleagues will have conducted over 60 small townhall meetings scattered across western Canada. In my riding we held one about half way through the north and south Peace River agricultural regions in a small little community called Farmington. I suspect this is one of the few times members will hear that name in this place. It is not a big community but it is a very important agricultural community in my riding of Prince George—Peace River.
The meeting was held on January 11, a cold winter night with blowing snow and blizzard conditions in the Peace River country in northern British Columbia. We expected maybe a few dozen farmers to show up. When my colleague and I went to the meeting we were not sure just how many people would brave the cold, the wind and the snow that night but over 100 farmers came out to that meeting, these were men and women who realized their livelihoods and the very security and future of their family farms were at stake. Some of them travelled dozens of kilometres and, in some cases well over 100 kilometres, to attend the meeting that night.
My colleague from Peace River held similar meetings in his riding of Peace River, Alberta, the adjoining riding just immediately to the east of my riding. He held meetings in Grande Prairie and Peace River and the response was the same. If we lump the two meetings together, we had well over 150 individuals show up to air their concerns.
Following the meeting we had in Farmington, one of my constituents undertook a unique journey. Nick Parsons, from Farmington, a small community just north of the city of Dawson Creek, at mile zero of the Alaska highway, took it upon himself to undertake a combine odyssey to Ottawa. He decided to drive his combine right here to Parliament Hill.