Madam Chairman, I thank my colleague for allowing me a very minor portion of the time allocated to us. I too would like to echo his opening comments and congratulate the Secretary of State for Rural Development with whom I have had the opportunity of dealing on a number of occasions in his portfolio.
I will talk about rural development and where I see his department heading in the not too distant future with respect to helping rural communities not only maintain their populations but hopefully increase them and grow. He read a comment from a wonderfully prepared report, which unfortunately I have not had the opportunity of reading. It will be on my reading list in the not too distant future.
If we go back into history we will recognize that the whole country was developed on natural resources. Explorers came here because of the fish and the furs they could harvest and export back to Europe. My grandfather, as I am sure is the case with many ancestors of other people here, came to Canada because of agricultural land. People could come here and get land at reasonable prices, start raising a family and grow the crops we are so famous for.
Our natural resources, inclusive of the mining we talked about, the natural gas and the oil sands projects, are the backbone of the country. They started the country. They are the backbone of our economy. We have grown beyond that and have embraced the technical revolution we have enjoyed over the last number of years and the technology we have developed along with it.
However the problem we are suffering right now is the fact that Canadians have forgotten their roots. They have forgotten how the country was developed. They have forgotten what is still the backbone of our economy.
I have had the advantage of living in Toronto, and maybe that is a disadvantage. I know the difference between rural Canada and what we appreciate as being there from the earth. People from Toronto take it for granted. When people in Toronto flick a light switch they think that is where electricity comes from. I am not trying to be derogatory to the people of Toronto. What I am saying is that urban dwellers, of which I was one, take for granted all that is being provided.
When a thermostat is turned on, be it heat that comes from a coal-fired, a gas-fired or perhaps even an electric furnace, that energy comes from the rest of the country. Canadians are now allowed to take advantage of that. I am speaking about natural resources but obviously I know agriculture best coming from the area that I do.
When urban dwellers buy at a grocery store most of them believe that the foodstuffs come from that store. The foodstuffs come from my area. They come from people like my grandfather who planted the seeds and grew the crops. They come from people who raised the cattle, the pork or the chickens. They come from those people who we cannot forget and, unfortunately, in our society we have forgotten.
My colleague said that he would leave agriculture as it is my forte. I have talked in the House too many times about the crisis that agriculture is now facing. It is for any number of reasons. It is because of an unlevel playing field and subsidies that are being paid by Americans and Europeans. It is because of the horrendous increase in the cost of production through natural gas prices for fertilizer and fuel prices for the tractors. We cannot trade our commodities with other countries because of unfair subsidization.
What we need to do is to remember where we came from. We need to support that industry as well as other industries. We also need to get a mindset. I will not throw stones or cast aspersions, but I think the government has basically lost touch with that natural resource, that primary industry, agriculture. We have to develop a mindset that says we as Canadians will support that industry.
How do we do that? We do that with long term support systems that we put into place. We need to develop those so that there is some hope for our younger generation to come into and continue in the industry. We need food, shelter, heat and water to exist.
If the minister of agriculture were here I would ask to him to please have the European mindset where they have said that they will support their farmers, their rural communities and their agriculture.
I will switch gears a little because we do have the Secretary of State for Rural Development here. I will talk about what he knows best, which is rural development, those rural communities that this great country is made up of. Unfortunately, more and more people are moving into those urban centres but there are still a lot of us who would prefer to live in rural communities because of the lifestyle, the clean air, the clean water and the ability to live in a rural setting that is more conducive to raising families.
I had a chance to talk to the minister and he has been very good at looking at the big picture. However, I would like to give him some suggestions about how we could preserve rural living. One suggestion would be to introduce a tax incentive that would attract people to live in rural communities. We have talked about tax incentives for northern allowances.
We should also be looking at different ways of attracting health care professionals and workers into rural Canada. One of the major problems we have in rural Canada right now is attracting health care professionals. That is not to say that the problem is not there for urban centres either, but we have a worse problem in trying to bring those people into our communities. Health care, as we all know, is probably the issue when it comes to supporting a rural community with an elderly population. We should be looking at ways to attract health care professionals into rural Canada.
We should also be looking at capital availability for infrastructure. My colleague talked about the solid infrastructure, the bricks and mortar, the roads, the railways and the highways. Rural Canada also needs to have the technical infrastructure in place. If we do not have those advantages we will lose that to the urban centres. It is not good for the country if it is made up of just four or five megalopolises.
We must maintain our rural communities. Perhaps we should look at capital projects for infrastructure in rural areas. Perhaps we should look at different ways of attracting people to live in rural Canada. Maybe housing is the answer. We have seen examples. Elliot Lake has attracted groups of retirees from urban centres to adopt what I consider a much nicer lifestyle in a rural area. Perhaps it is a marketing thing that the Secretary of State for Rural Development should be doing.
Perhaps we should look at our own departments, because a lot of problems come from the federal government. Let us take a simple issue like customs and customs areas. A prime example is my constituency where there are a number of border crossings. When a decision is made by Canada customs to reduce, remove or change the service at a border crossing it affects the whole community, but the department making the decision does not have the mindset or vision to see how it will affect the community. We must change that thought process. When a decision is made, no matter how small, it will affect other people. That must be dovetailed.
The secretary of state talked about the rural lens. The rural lens would make sure we bring all departments together so that when they make a decision or change a service they communicate with each other to make sure the change will not negatively affect the lifestyle of people in a community.
If we lose three people in a customs department in Boissevain, Manitoba, it means a great deal. If we lose three people in downtown Toronto it does not mean as much. We must therefore acquire the right mindset.
In closing, the biggest issue vis-à-vis natural resources and rural development is education. There must be government support. Rural development must be funded by society in general, which probably means urban dwellers, but they must understand why they are doing it. We must all decide among ourselves, and I think we have. I think the people in the Chamber tonight recognize that rural Canada is a vital part of what the country is all about. Having come to that realization we must now decide how to provide services that will allow rural Canada to prosper and grow. That is where we must head from here.
I thank the minister for being here. I would add that the debate tonight has been excellent. We had a debate like this not long ago on foot and mouth disease. Like tonight, we debated the issues logically and in a non-partisan way. I congratulate the government for putting the process forward. I hope we can continue this process in other areas of debate because it is very worth while. This is the way it should be in parliament, not acrimonious as we have seen in the past. I congratulate the government for bringing the debate forward.