Mr. Chairman, I was interested in the figures my colleague from Malpeque gave out today with regard to the subsidies and the comparison with some of our trading partners. I want to take some issue with those.
I recall about six months or so prior to the last federal election, which was the spring of 2000, a number of farmers' associations in my area in the province of Ontario got together and hired an economist to do an analysis of what had specifically happened to the farming communities around the world after the last round of GATT negotiations in Paraguay. The analysis was significantly more shocking if one looks at the impact of what the government did after Paraguay and its impact on the farming community in Canada.
The economist analyzed the situations in Canada, the United States, Japan, Australia, Europe and New Zealand. As my friend has suggested, the subsidies and assistance Canada provided to farmers were dramatically wiped out, and I do not use that term mildly, in comparison to what those other countries did, with perhaps the exception of New Zealand which did very close to what Canada did. It was illustrated on a chart or by a graph and it really was shocking.
What I am worried about, and I would suggest this to my friend, is if in fact they are using his figures when they go to the WTO this time around or in any further negotiations would they not be better to use the other figures? If we do not get the other governments to drop their subsidies, is he prepared to encourage his government to spend that $2 billion or perhaps more per year to bring our farmers on par with the rest of the world?