Mr. Speaker, it was just over three years ago, as a rookie MP with a farming background from a rural riding in western Canada, I stood here with a certain amount of pride and dignity to talk about farming issues.
Three years ago agriculture in western Canada was on a slippery slope. We started to realize that farming out west was 90% politics and 10% producing the product.
We have seen agriculture over the last three years decline to the point that we have an industry in crisis. Agriculture is one of the largest industries in the country when we consider the inputs that go into the ground, the processing that applies to everything we produce and the jobs created on the in and the out.
The agriculture minister stood in this place and said to western Canadians and Ontario producers that crop insurance and NISA were the answers to global subsidization problems. What a ridiculous statement.
Later the Prime Minister stood in his place and we heard him say that there could not be an agricultural crisis because he did not read about it in the National Post or the Globe and Mail .
Those newspapers do not represent the problems we have in western Canada or in rural Ontario, let alone in Quebec or the maritimes. An editorial writer from the Globe and Mail who is based in Winnipeg decried the whole situation. What a joke. Those people should get outside the city, have a look around and talk to producers who cannot afford to put bread on their own table let alone put a crop in the ground this year.
There is a lot of talk about the $500 million that has been allocated. There are a couple of problems with that number. When we look at the budget that the government handles, close to $160 billion this year, $500 million is not a lot of money in that context. It is a lot of money when compared to other industries that receive money from the government, but we are talking about the third largest contributor to the GDP.
The problem has gone way past the farm gate. As I alluded to, a tremendous number of service industries feed into the agricultural sector. Input costs have gone up 50%, 100%, or 200% in some cases, for fuel, fertilizer, chemicals, land taxes, machinery costs and so on.
The member who spoke before talked about a 1,000 acre western farm. That would be a hobby farm out there. The average farm in the west approaches 3,000 to 4,000 acres. There are all kinds of large farms in my riding with 10,000, 12,000 and 15,000 acres that try and make a go of it. The average cost of machinery is in excess of $1 million to $2 million on each farm.
The problem with all those inputs, the parts and everything else that keeps them running, is our low dollar. All the input costs are based on American money. We are starting out 37 to 40 cents behind, and those costs are rising.
The Prime Minister says that the low dollar is great for everybody because it helps with our exports. Well it has not seemed to help with my export prices on commodities that the wheat board handles but it certainly has cost me a lot in the pocketbook on the input side.
The freight system in western Canada is now based on conflict and animosity rather than being commercially based and properly tendered. Rising transportation inputs are probably the highest costs on my farm. Transportation costs me at least one-third off the top, which is absolutely ridiculous.
The answer to rising transportation costs on the prairies is to go higher up the food chain. Let us value add to the grain, durum, barley and so on. Let us run the flour mills and pasta plants, which have been tried and shut down because of regulations controlling the way we must buy and re-buy our own products. It is absolutely ludicrous. We are forced to pay freight and elevation charges on a product that never leaves the farm. How smart is that?
When that is explained to backbenchers on the other side they say that it is ridiculous. They ask why durum growers cannot build their own pasta plants and grind their durum into flour and recoup the extra $3 a bushel. The Canadian Wheat Board says that we cannot do that.
Ministers, like the one from Prince Edward Island who stood here and said that the wheat board is a great thing, do not live on the prairies. The people who come from these opposition benches do live there and we all got elected in 1993, 1997 and 2000 campaigning on an open and accountable optional marketing system. We need that.
The wheat board does not export out into the global market as it used to. Everything it buys and sells now goes through a line company, hence the transportation, freight and elevation charges to tidewater. There are no terminals on the west or east coasts. It is run back through one of the line companies. Who is making the money? It is not coming back to the producer at the farm gate.
Where do we go? The debate today is on subsidies, safety nets and the role of government. The role of government in this institution is to play catch up. The farm is in crisis. We must have a cash injection before spring. Farm groups and provincial governments are lobbying for a minimum of $900 million from the federal government and the balance of 40 cents on the dollar from the provinces. They thought that would get the crop in the ground and that hopefully the European and American subsidies would start tailing off. We have seen crop problems in the rest of the world that may bring the price back up.
We need those options. We must be able to do that. We must be able to value add, as I said. We need the government to look at the tax component of our input costs and the huge freight problem in the west.
There are answers. We need a safety net system. There is talk about short and long term situations. In the short term we need cash to get the crop in the ground. There is no doubt about it because we are playing catch up.
In the long term we need a NISA account that will allow us to level the playing field for good and bad years. Even the agriculture minister now realizes his previous position was wrong. We must be able to use the NISA account to level out the bad years. We must change the fundamental way NISA is handled so young farmers can get a start. The average age of farmers in Saskatchewan is 60. We have lost two generations of young producers because they cannot afford to get into the industry. We need a NISA account that will allow that type of thing to happen.
We need crop insurance that is user friendly so we can insure crops that are not covered properly now. When there is a claim we need results to be specific to one farm and not calculated as a general average, as is done with the costs.
We need a long term trade type of cushioning mechanism. It can be the trade distortion thing we talked about with the Crow money or a system like GRIP or MRI in Ontario, but it must be able to soften the blow of offshore improper trade subsidies. That is the long term requirement, but we need cash today to be able to keep on farming.
I am sharing my time with the member for Crowfoot who I know has some great points to put on the record today.