Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here in the 37th parliament and to make my first speech. I will be dealing primarily with agriculture as it pertains to the Speech from the Throne, and my reply to it.
Certainly in the time that I have I will not have time to talk exhaustively about all the issues but I will deal with some of them. I would also like to share my time with the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley.
First, I am pleased that I had the support of my constituents of Selkirk—Interlake. I intend to repay them with diligence and hard work while I am down here.
I will deal with the Speech from the Throne in a positive way.
The farm groups and farmers across the country have given many good suggestions to the agriculture minister and the government. I will go into some of those suggestions in a moment.
The farm community has had a reaction to the fact that agricultural issues were not dealt with in the throne speech nor by subsequent Liberal members during debate.
Bruce Johnstone, a writer for the Regina
Leader Post
, summed up how the farmers feel about the throne speech. He said that it set a new low for “vacuity, fatuity, banality and inanity”. He went on to say:
The government will help Canada's agricultural sector move beyond crisis management—leading to more genuine diversification and value-added growth, new investments and employment, better land use, and high standards of environmental stewardship and food safety.
He also pointed out that all the Liberals had to offer were empty election promises of more farm aid bromides about the need to diversify and add value and a lot of hot air. He concluded by quoting another author. He said, and I have heard the same from farmers in Ontario and in the west, “This high-sounding rhetoric is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.
Unfortunately, that is exactly how the farmers feel about the throne speech. Agriculture is having a real income crisis. It absolutely needs an immediate injection of additional cash over and above the farm safety net programs. Farmers are asking for that because the farm net safety program of AIDA, agriculture income disaster assistance, left out so many farmers with little or no assistance whatsoever. Farmers, whose family income from the farm is well below the $20,000 mark, are actually living in poverty.
Some of the groups that have come to Ottawa to protest and put forward suggestions have had meetings with the agriculture minister, but I would like to reiterate some of the things that have been said so that it gets recorded in the House of Commons.
I will start off by reporting first on the farmers from a town in my area called Beausejour. They told me that their backs were finally against the wall and that they had done their best. They said that they had done everything by way of diversification and efficiency but that they wanted me to report to the government that they needed a program which would deliver aid quickly, efficiently and without a big administrative expense. Their request, which was in the neighbourhood of $50 an acre, was what they felt they needed. I would like that passed along to the agriculture minister. I am not talking party policy here, but I am telling the House what farmers out there are saying.
The western barley growers is another good example of a farm group that has been in contact with the agriculture minister. They say that there are several areas of opportunity for government to assist agriculture without direct subsidies.
A lot of these things were put forward by the Canadian Alliance also: removal of the excise tax on fuel used by producers in off road use; removal of the excise tax on fuel used by the railways to haul grain; review of the Grain Transportation Act to ensure that the cost savings, which were envisioned by the Estey commission, were actually delivered to producers; review of user fees; and a review of government regulations to ensure that only those which are required to market Canada's agriculture production remain in force.
The Ontario corn producers have asked for money over and above the current safety net commitment, to be administered by the provinces. Once again, safety net programs have failed them. The grain growers of Canada are asking for an immediate infusion of public funds to restore equity between levels of direct income supports for grain and oilseed producers in Canada versus those in the United States. This is an issue of parity. They estimate that would work out to between $1.5 billion to $2 billion nationally.
That is a large sum, but let us remember that we all have to eat. It is in Canada's national interest that we have a viable agriculture and are able for the most part to supply ourselves with the majority of food we eat.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture has requested $900 million in additional farm aid over the next three years. Once again it has identified that the agricultural policies the Liberal government has brought out over the past seven years have failed farmers in Ontario and across the country and need to be addressed in an emergency fashion, as opposed to the long term, efficient, effective program that should have been put in place by the government in these last seven years.
While these requests sound like a lot of money, once again I say that they are for emergency use.
The Saskatchewan rally group was here. That group was also talking in terms of $25 to $80 an acre. It is now talking about a plan similar to the one in the province of Quebec, where the cost of production is actually the basis on which farm support is provided. While that would be a lot of money across the country, we cannot have farmers producing food and working like serfs and slaves for the whole country.
In my own province, Keystone Agricultural Producers had its annual meeting, which I was happy to attend, and came up with a suggestion. Those producers said that they have identified to the government that a 1% food tax should be looked at. That is another suggestion the government could look at. They also made a suggestion for alternate land use services. That would be a 20% land set-aside over nine years, with payments being made for the land that is set aside.
Over the years, besides the immediate cash injection and the long term safety net program, the Canadian Alliance has talked about tax reduction. We have talked about harmonizing with the United States in regard to the use of chemicals so that there is no interference in trade with our big trading partners.
There are many things the government could do. The suggestions have all been put before the government. It is the duty and it is the responsibility of the government to address this crisis in agriculture income, part of which was of the government's making, and it is the government's fault for having let it occur.
I hope the agriculture minister and the Prime Minister listen to farmers and farm groups and deal with this issue before spring seeding.