Mr. Speaker, at noon today I was among many people at the farm demonstration in Ottawa. There were also thousands of farmers demonstrating in Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Swift Current, the Toronto area and right across the country.
They are doing so because farmers are in the biggest crisis they have seen since the 1930s and many are going bankrupt and being forced to leave the land. In the prairies alone, between the fall of 1999 and the fall of 2000, 22,500 farmers left the land. It is hard to believe that so many have left the land. The reason is that our federal government has not been supporting our farmers like governments have in other parts of the world.
In Europe grain farmers get about 56 cents on the dollar from the European Community. In the United States they get about 38 cents on the dollar. In this country it is only 11 cents on the dollar.
We need more money from the federal government. Five hundred million dollars is not enough. It has to be doubled to around $1 billion in the short term, and in the long term we need a long term farm program based on the costs of production.