Mr. Speaker, on March 17 I posed two questions to the minister of agriculture and I am very pleased to see the parliamentary secretary to the minister in the House tonight.
As usual, the two questions I posed were very valid questions. They were very succinct questions. They were very simple questions. I expected an answer from the minister of agriculture but as usual, there was a lot of doublespeak, there was a lot of beating around the bush and in fact no answers to those very simple questions.
The first question was rather interesting because at that time there were a number of supporters who were in town supporting this particular party. A number of people in that particular group of people wanted to reinstate what was known as the GRIP program, the gross revenue insurance program. Lo and behold, when they went to this huge gathering, all of the people in that gathering supported the fact that the government should reinstate the GRIP program.
For your information, Mr. Speaker, the GRIP program was a farm support program put into place prior to 1993 when this government took power and when it got into power in 1995 it in its short term mind decided to get rid of the GRIP program for in fact short term gain but for long term pain.
Here we have a wonderful group of individuals who support the government saying unanimously, “Bring us back the GRIP program”. So I asked the minister a very simple question: “Will you support that particular comment and resolution and will you in fact bring back the GRIP program”. There was no answer.
From there I then went on to very simply say that if the minister does not want to support the GRIP, then let's identify and let's analyze the program that was put in its place and that is the AIDA program. We recognize by the vote itself that AIDA was not being supported by the people who it was meant for, the farmers of western Canada. So we looked at whether there were some advantages to this AIDA program over the GRIP and we looked at the administration costs.
Lo and behold, the administration costs of the AIDA program to deliver some $500 million in 1998 came to a grand total of $35 million, about seven times what the administration costs were to administer not only GRIP but the NISA. NISA and GRIP were less than 2% of all of the program dollars delivered under those programs.
We now have here a program that the government's own supporters say is not good, that it is costing huge dollars that could be going to agriculture and to the farmers themselves and now going to bureaucrats to administer the program, so we ask ourselves, why would the minister of agriculture not want to answer those two simple questions. Why not reinstitute GRIP, a program that is being accepted by all those who wish to have it back, and in fact the government could save money by putting the GRIP program back and not having to spend those exorbitant sums on bureaucrats in the department to administer and deliver the AIDA program.
I would like the parliamentary secretary if he can to perhaps just stick to the subject, not talk about previous deficits, not talk about previous policies or previous parties and governments, just stick to the questions and the issues that are before him today.
Why not reinstate GRIP and please talk to the administration costs of that program.