Mr. Speaker, I too wish to give thanks to my hon. colleague for his efforts in raising this issue. It is also a great problem in my riding and we have had quite a number of people address it. Like all problems, though, attention is required if we are to see any solution.
During the last session of parliament I was privileged to lay upon the Table petitions from my constituents and from a number of others in Saskatchewan. There were approximately 300 signatures on the one I had. According to an article in the National Post , farmers sent Ottawa a petition of 5,000 signatures in total asking that they be allowed to use concentrated liquid strychnine to battle an annual gopher infestation. The animals have been causing trouble on Saskatchewan farmlands in growing numbers since 1992 when Ottawa restricted the sale of the poison.
There is an interesting quote from the article. “The poisons being purchased are just not effective”, says Sinclair Harrison, a Saskatchewan farmer. “It makes the gophers sick but it does not kill them. We don't want to see anything suffer”.
Not only is Sinclair Harrison a farmer, he also happens to be the head of SARM, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities. We will be saying more about that organization in just a moment.
Each of the prairie provinces is susceptible to millions of dollars of damage. In fact the hon. minister, Mr. Vanclief himself, at one time said that gophers--