Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Champlain.
This evening in the House we have an opportunity to discuss an extremely urgent problem, basically the state of emergency in the area of agriculture. This debate was requested by the member for Brandon—Souris under Standing Order 52.
What is interesting about the Standing Order is that it provides that, in determining whether a matter should have urgent consideration, the Speaker shall have regard to the extent to which the debate or study requested concerns the administrative responsibilities of the government or could come within the scope of ministerial action. The Speaker also shall have regard to the probability of the matter being brought before the House within reasonable time by other means.
I would like to begin by thanking the Speaker for having recognized the urgent nature of the matter we are to debate this evening and for having authorized us to proceed.
Turning now to the criteria he must consider, he clearly identified this as an area concerning the administrative responsibilities of the government, as we all know it does. His other consideration was the probability of the matter being brought before the House within reasonable time by other means.
When the Minister of Finance, for instance, tells us that he was not thinking of bringing down a budget at this time of year but was going to wait until the fall, we wonder how the government is going to assume its responsibilities and find ways of dealing with this emergency.
The crisis in agriculture has not sprung up overnight. Already in December 1998, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food set aside all its other concerns and turned its attention to this issue.
It sounded the alarm with its report titled “The Farm Income Crisis in Canada”. Although the title might suggest that the committee had grasped how urgent it was to act, the committee's recommendations were described in the Bloc Quebecois dissenting report as paying no attention to the urgency of the situation.
I must acknowledge, three years down the line, just how accurate the Bloc Quebecois comments on the committee's recommendations were. The Canadian agricultural sector is in a state of ongoing major crisis.
In his letter to the Speaker of the House requesting the emergency debate, our colleague from Brandon—Souris described the crisis very well. He pointed out that agricultural communities across Canada had attempted to remedy the deplorable conditions that afflict them today.
Referring to a labour survey carried out by Statistics Canada, he said that, in 1999 alone, the prairies had lost 22,100 farmers as a result of the heavy psychological and financial pressures on the agricultural industry, not to mention the natural disasters and the unjustified subsidies in other countries which aggravate the situation.
Everyone who has spoken, the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, the leader of the Canadian Alliance, all of the members, have drawn attention to the same thing. Unfortunately, we could expect nothing better from the government than the reactions we have just heard from the minister and the secretary of state. No doubt some money is invested in agriculture, but not enough, given the scope of the problems.
This government lacks vision, as our colleague from Brandon—Souris pointed out. It is probably not the only one to lack vision either, since agriculture is in fairly poor shape. The people in the west have long, and perhaps too long, not been allowed to diversify their crops enough.
Prince Edward Island produces potatoes. Naturally, when there is a problem with potatoes, when the U.S. threatens to no longer allow Prince Edward Island potatoes into the states and Mexico wants to follow suit, clearly, if your province produces only one crop, you have big problems and your problems will grow.
One of the things that helps Quebec farming in a way—I see great financiers in this House and so I may use a financial expression—is that Quebec has a diversified farming portfolio, so that when glitches occur in one area, it is possible to fall back on another crop and try to cut losses.
When our colleague from Brandon—Souris wrote the Speaker to submit his request, he raised a very important point. He noted that the subsidies the U.S. and the E.U. give their farm producers cause ours, who have had a lot of their subsidies cut enormously by the Canadian government, to have a hard time competing in this area.
Let us make no mistake. The debate our colleague put on the table this evening is really of national concern, and the questions he raised directly affect all farming communities right across Canada, as he himself mentioned in his February 12 letter.
We must discuss the problems facing the agricultural industry in depth and we must try to find specific solutions to resolve these problems in the short, medium and long terms.
We have some catching up to do. I have been an MP since 1993 and I must unfortunately note that the Liberal government led by the member for Saint-Maurice has really neglected the agricultural sector.
We have become—to use an expression often used in my culture—more Catholic than the Pope. Because the WTO said that the agricultural industry should not be subsidized, the government seized the opportunity to quickly cut as many subsidies as possible, while the Americans hung on to theirs, completely destabilizing agricultural production in Canada.
When we talk about the problems affecting western Canada, Ontario and Prince Edward Island in particular, we must not kid ourselves. While the situation may not be catastrophic for all farmers in Canada, it is at least difficult. We will have a better idea of the extent of the problems facing our producers when we can examine the action plan soon to be submitted by provincial ministers to the office of the federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, as part of the consensus reached at their meeting in Regina.
Then we will have an opportunity to gauge just how open-minded the Liberal government is, depending on whether it takes this consensus into account and looks for ways it can help farmers. In the context of market globalization, it is up to us to take the initiative to go global so that we not lose out because others made the decision for us.
I think that it is also important that we find a way of being as self-sufficient as possible in our agricultural production. There are ways of comparing the extent to which each of the provinces helps farmers. Quebec has, I think, been successful at pooling its resources so that money is distributed to producers within programs providing real assistance that reflects the needs and difficulties of our farmers.
I hope with all my heart that the government is open to the idea of negotiating assistance to farmers.