Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to speak on the late show. I had the opportunity of posing a question for the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago with respect to the Prime Minister's visit to the United States and his discussions with the President Bush.
The Prime Minister was to talk about the unfair subsidization of agricultural products that the United States has been so famous for. The Prime Minister in his answer was very forthcoming. He said that he was going to discuss that particular issue with the president and that he would try to convince him to remove those subsidies wherever possible so that we could compete on a fair and level playing field.
As part of my question, I also suggested that if he did not receive the answer from the president that he was looking for, that there would not be any more subsidies, would he then increase the support payments to Canadian farmers so that they can compete. That part of the question was never answered and was left hanging, a moot answer from the Prime Minister.
I would like to have an answer because it is extremely important. For example, right now the United States is putting $48.2 billion back into its agriculture and its producers. Canada right now, and it has increased, is supporting its agricultural producers by $3.1 billion. There is a terrible discrepancy with the amount of unfair subsidization, not only in the United States but in Europe.
This is my question for the parliamentary secretary tonight. Since the Prime Minister did not get any of those assurances from the president, since there are still unfair subsidies being put forward by the United States and the European Union, since our producers are still not able to compete on a level playing field, why will the Prime Minister of the country not support agriculture? As a matter of fact, it is getting to the point that the Americans are putting more and more dollars into its producers.
Just recently, the parliamentary secretary and I had an opportunity to meet the house agricultural committee chairman, Larry Combest, while we were in Washington. Mr. Combest said:
America's farmers and ranchers will be looking to us to not only assist them in coping with the challenges that they are facing, but also to make some meaningful improvements to the farm safety net in order to bring some stability to their livelihoods. I think that the report we are reviewing today presents us with good opportunity to begin an earnest effort in this Committee to build consensus on how best to address all the challenges facing agriculture today, and to craft better farm policy for the future.
I wish we had that individual here on that side of the House so that those same views could be shared with our producers and our agricultural farmers of the country.
I want the parliamentary secretary to be able to stand today and tell us that in fact we are going to compete with the Americans on a subsidy basis. The Prime Minister got the wrong answers when he was down there. I would like to hear the right answers from the parliamentary secretary.