Mr. Speaker, I value the privilege of speaking to the bill because it addresses the wider issue of agriculture, a very important aspect of what happens here.
I was not originally scheduled to speak on this but after listening to the debate throughout the day, and especially to my hon. colleague from Crowfoot, it got me fired up. I felt I had to get to the House and deliver some words that would castigate the Liberal government for its total mismanagement of the agricultural sector.
We are here talking about the Farm Credit Corporation, a corporation that should have been designed to help farmers but which, too often, has been just the opposite. What the country needs is a government policy that would permit farmers to actually produce and market their product at a price they can afford to pay for production and provide themselves and their families with a reasonable living. That is what is really needed and that is the part that is missing.
Therefore in the few minutes I have I will talk a little bit about not only the Farm Credit Corporation and financing for farmers and agricultural producers, but I also want to address briefly and tie it in with the whole idea of marketing by the wheat board and the way it applies and misapplies.
The reason I became fired up is that I remembered not long ago speaking with a farmer from Saskatchewan. I have said a number of times in the House that I was born in Saskatchewan. I used to say that I was actually born at home because it was a long time ago when a lot of people were born at home. I used to say that as soon as my mother saw me they had to rush her to the hospital. That was not really true. It was just a little bit of humour.
However I was born and raised on a farm in Saskatchewan in the last year of the thirties. Out west we know the term dirty thirties. I do not think that term is as well known in Ontario and points east. In those years we had a tremendous drought. We had jokes about how poor we were and all sorts of different things. However I do not want to get into that. What I want to say is that when my mom and dad got married and started farming it was a difficult uphill climb. It meant long hours of work, being subjected to extreme variables and, once in a while, getting a good crop.
In those years a really good crop meant maybe 20 to 25 bushels to the acre. Ten to fifteen bushels was considered average and anything less than that was mediocre or a crop failure.
The incredible thing is that right now farmers are producing crops that average 40 to 50 bushels per acre on the same land. Production has gone up because of the advanced use of modern technology. Efficiency has also gone up.
My dad and his two boys farmed 10 quarters, which was considered a pretty big farm back in the forties when I was a young boy. A typical farm today that can make its own way is at least 10 times as large. We are talking about 40 quarters to make a good viable farming operation.
Instead of summer fallowing every other year and having only half the land in production, with the use of chemicals and modern farming methods they are able to do much better than that, in many instances not engaging in summer fallow for the rest of the land at all.
It is really true that my brother and his boys today can produce four times as much crop per acre as my dad did some 40 years ago. What is so absolutely distressing is that in this modern day, when production has never been as good, farmers are suffering more than ever. We need to ask ourselves why that is.
My dad, who is in his 90th year and has seen many crops come off the land, cannot be kept off the land at harvest time. There is something magnetic about the grain coming out of the combine or, back in the old days, out of the threshing machine. We are producing food to feed people who would otherwise starve to death. That is a very noble profession.
My dad told me last year how sad it was that when we have one of the best crops ever farmers are not making it. That is really sad because farmers still work hard and long hours, as we do. Nothing has changed. For farmers to be successful they must work long hours, especially during seeding and harvest. It involves a great deal of hard work, massive investment and a lot of risk taking, studying and reading to be competent in all the different aspects of farming. What do we have? We have a government that stands in the way.
I want to talk about a farmer to whom I spoke. When I go to Saskatchewan to visit my relatives, I go with my brother to the elevator to look at the prices, to deliver a load of grain or to do different things and I end up talking with different people. When they find out that their neighbour's little brother is an MP they like to talk to me. I talked with a farmer who was very frustrated. This is very relevant to today's discussion. He told me that he was frustrated because he was going to be out of business with the way things were going. He said that his payments were due and that the Farm Credit Corporation was telling him to pay up or it would foreclose on his farm.
The same farmer told me that he could pay the bill. He said that he had a market for his bins full of grain if only he could be permitted to get a trucker to haul it. He said that he could sell his Durham wheat for approximately 50% more than he would get from the wheat board. He said that he could get the cash right away, make his payment and then everyone would be happy. However the wheat board said no. It said that he had to sell it to the wheat board at a loss. The government agency, the wheat board, which presumably is there to help farmers, in this instance specifically prevented the farmer from even surviving.
Do members of the House see why I am fired up and had to rush down here to say this? This is so wrong. Liberals ought to wake up and realize that if they cannot give a proper price to farmers for their product so they can pay their bills, make a living and not go deeper into debt until they face bankruptcy and lose farms that have been in the family for 100 years, then maybe they should consider that their policies might be wrong. Maybe they should think about that.
The Farm Credit Corporation was supposed to be designed to help farmers. The only way one can help people by lending them money is if those people have the ability to repay, otherwise it becomes a massive, socialistic way of confiscating farmers' land.
Under the bill, the Farm Credit Corporation, under its new name, which will cost thousands of dollars to change all the stationery and everything, would have the right to own property and lease it out. In other words, this is a very thinly disguised plan to simply take over all the farmland on behalf of the government. I am not one to say that this is the government's overt plan, but I predict it will be the result of it.
The Farm Credit Corporation has the ability to lend money to farmers when those farmers at the same time do not have the capacity to pay that loan back as well as pay for their other operating costs because of the restrictions of the wheat board and other government policies, such as high taxes and a whole bunch of other things. In the end farmers will face foreclosure and the Farm Credit Corporation will end up owning the land, which by the way, in the short term I think it is inevitable that some farmers will not make it.
However in this particular bill the Farm Credit Corporation would now be given the freedom to continue to keep that land, farm it or rent it out to other people. It is a straight form of confiscating the very essence of what farming is all about, and that is the private family farm.
I am very concerned that the government, in tinkering with stuff like changing the name of the Farm Credit Corporation, is missing entirely the whole impact that agriculture has and the impact that this lazy, Liberal federal government has on the farm scene in Saskatchewan, Alberta and in Manitoba particularly.
I do not know what members think about this, but I believe in the equality of people. It does not seem right to me that a farmer in one of the prairie provinces can be coerced, under the threat of going to jail, to sell his grain to the wheat board, whereas farmers in other parts of the country are not so required. Other farmers can get an export permit if they want and can export to the United States if they find a market for their product.
I am at a loss for proper vocabulary here. I know I must be respectful in the House, but why, in the name of everything going, can the government justify that? If there are farmers in Saskatchewan who want to build a co-operative pasta plant together, what is it in the government's motivation that says that they cannot do it, that they must first sell all their wheat to the wheat board at a loss and then the wheat board will sell it to the pasta plant? Farmers look at the bottom line and say that if they need the wheat board as the middle agent here, they cannot make it and therefore the deal is off.
What is it in the government's interest and in the people of Canada's interest to say to farmers that they might have an idea that will help them but that they had better not do it because it is against government policy? It is self-evident that the policy is totally wrong. If a person actually comes up with a solution to the problem, why would the government not allow them to expedite that solution?
Other businesses have no such restriction. A good friend of mine is a car dealer who has a lot of inventory. I asked him one day how he managed to keep so much inventory. He said that it was a good business decision. He said that when his lot is full of new cars, people come by and say that he is really successful because of all the new cars he expected to sell. They pop in and buy a new car. His volume goes up simply because of his business decision. There is no government rule that says he cannot do that.
There is another car dealer nearby who has a very small inventory. He claims he has lower costs because he does not maintain a big inventory. Therefore people can go to him and get a lower price.
It is competitive. Both of them are doing fine. They do not need a government agency to tell them how to run their businesses.
It is high time that the federal government butts out of most of its very restrictive rules and regulations and gives farmers the freedom to market the products they produce in the way they choose. After all, one could properly ask who owns the product? Who is making the payments on the land? Who is paying for the fuel and paying all the taxes on it? Who is buying and repairing the machinery? Who is getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning to work on the land? Who works all day until sundown? Who is taking all the financial risks? It is the farmer.
What does the government do? It says the last thing it wants is a successful farmer in Canada. That is really the message it is giving. I cannot understand it.
In essence what I am saying is that the bill is totally misdirected. The government should be focusing much more on getting its act together with respect to marketing and international agreements. It should do what it should have been doing for the last seven years, and frankly it was the same for the Conservatives before. The government should have been working on making sure the world market had a level playing field, something the government totally failed to do. That is what it should be concentrating on. That is what we should be discussing.
Instead what we are discussing is changing the name of the Farm Credit Corporation so that it can in the name of government confiscate all the property in the country that belongs to farmers, meanwhile making it impossible for farmers to make a living because they cannot sell their product for what it costs to produce it. How shameful. I think the government is totally misdirected.
In conclusion, I would like to ask a question. I think members of the House should ask this question, as should anyone who happens to be watching on television.
By the way, I doubt there are very many farmers watching CPAC right now. This is not the time of year to be sitting in the house. In Saskatchewan and Alberta right now it is 3.30 in the afternoon. Farmers are out there working. They are not watching television, but I hope the word gets to them.
The questions that they should be asking are: Why should they be supporting a government which uses the very agencies that should be helping them and why should they be supporting a government which makes it virtually impossible for them to succeed? The government's policies do that.
Another example just came to mind. I talked to a farmer in Saskatchewan. My roots are there and I know a lot of people, although I represent a riding in Alberta. I speak to a lot of farmers there as well. This farmer in Saskatchewan said that what he did best was raise durum wheat, that his soil was best suited for that. He said he could not make a living with that and had to diversify. He has. He now does other things. He has entered into contracts with international companies.
This individual is a successful farmer. I think it is totally ironic that to be successful he had to divest himself totally of wheat board crops so that he has the freedom to make a living. Is that not ironic? The government should smarten up. That is my final answer.