Mr. Speaker, obviously the member for Brandon—Souris continues with old style politics about how the agriculture sector works and his understanding of it. The Progressive Conservatives had many years with massive majorities to set forth a long term agriculture policy. The member for Brandon—Souris sits there questioning whether the Canadian Alliance has a strong agriculture policy.
We have a strong policy regarding grain transportation and organic farming. We support supply management. We have always supported safety nets for farmers. When the Crow rate was thrown out we had the trade distortion adjustment program that would have continued supporting farmers.
Let us talk about the survey the member mentioned. The survey was not taken out of income tax forms. It was not taken out of who was filing an income and expense statement. It was a phone survey done by Statistics Canada. The survey did not determine the number of farms lost. It determined what it was told were the number of farm jobs lost. Certainly there were fewer people in the agriculture sector than before. However this member continues to ignore history. At the end of the second world war in Saskatchewan there were something like 175,000 farmers. At this point there are some 60,000 to 75,000 farmers there.
The Canadian Alliance very clearly understands that change or evolution in any business sector, including the agriculture sector, is necessary. Those members who would sit and save the status quo as it was 5 or 10 years ago are doomed to failure, and the Canadian Alliance will not let Canadian agriculture fail.