moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should compensate farmers for damage done to livestock and crops by gophers resulting from the banning of effective concentration of strychnine thereby removing the ability of farmers to control gophers on their lands.
Madam Speaker, at a time like this with the tragedies in New York, Washington and near Philadelphia, I hesitate to even bring forth this motion dealing with control of gophers. It seems in some ways so trivial compared to the extremely serious issue of this terrorist threat. If this had not been scheduled ahead of time, I would be calling on the government to focus strictly on national security over these next weeks and months because we do have a serious problem in that area. We have to focus the efforts of the House of parliament on national security.
However, private member's motions and bills are scheduled well ahead of time, and this motion is important. We will see how important it is when some of my colleagues speak on it. We saw this by the size of some of the public meetings which were held in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Back in 1994 the government removed the effective concentration of strychnine which was used in controlling gophers, or Richardson's ground squirrels, from the hands of farmers and others who really needed it to control this pest.
To get an idea of what this problem really entails, gophers cost farmers losses of tens of millions of dollars every year at a time when farmers cannot afford the losses.
A terrible drought has hit farmers from one end of the country to another. Because of unfair trade practices, prices have been driven down, in grains in particular. Farmers in many of the grain sectors are hanging on by their fingernails. Quite frankly, the government has not taken the removal of these unfair trade practices seriously. As a result, Canadian farmers have been producing at a disadvantage. However, this has also caused many farmers to lose their land in spite of being very good managers and good farmers. We have also lost some of our best farmers, in the grain sector in particular.
Gophers do not only affect farmers in the area of crops, they also affect farmers with livestock. Acres of pastures have been destroyed. Farmers have told me that they have had large pasture areas completely destroyed by gophers to a point where the cows cannot even graze. Furthermore, there has been damage to livestock through broken legs. People riding horses through pastures with gopher holes and the badgers that follow have sustained terrible injuries.
This is an important issue from a dollars and cents point of view. It is an important issue in terms of animal and human safety.
I was first elected in 1993. Since 1994 I have been working on trying to get the government to restore the proper concentration of strychnine and to allow farmers to mix it with their grain so that they can control gophers. I have had bills and motions on this issue before the House on two or three occasions. I have focused and concentrated on this. I believe that was partly the reason we had a temporary registration on strychnine in a controlled way in the province of Alberta this past summer. It was that important that an emergency registration was put in place last summer. However, farmers say that is not good enough. They need it indefinitely into the future.
Unfortunately the province of Saskatchewan did not manage to get this until later and only in a very restricted way. Farmers from Saskatchewan were looking enviously across the border into Alberta, wondering why they could not have an emergency registration like the farmers in Alberta.
None of this is the solution to the problem. The solution is for the government to restore into the hands of farmers and others who have to control pests, like gophers, an acceptable concentration of strychnine which will save farmers tens of millions of dollars.
Through an order paper question back in 1995, I asked for all documentation from government and to government dealing with this issue. I wanted to know what led to the outlawing of this high concentration of strychnine. It was shocking. I was given a one inch thick pile of paper.
One would expect to have found a study which would have led to the conclusion that it is dangerous for farmers to be using strychnine. There was no such study. Then I thought that I would at least find that the government had seen a lot of cases where pests not targeted had been affected. That was not the case.
This important tool that farmer's desperately needed, the absence of which cost tens of millions of dollars a year, was taken from the market based on complaints from one environmental group. It was a completely unreasonable lobby on the part of a small environmental group, which was not even one of our major environmental groups. I was really shocked to see that. I was also shocked to see that this had gone through the process of the federal government even with some involvement from the provinces.
Farmers are in such need of having this product restored that they are willing to go to the extent of taking a special half day safety course on the use of the product. They are willing to have experts come in and show them how to handle the product to ensure that only the target species would be affected because this is important to them. However, the government has allowed this to fall on deaf ears.
What is shocking to me as well is I have asked to make bills and motions votable on many occasions and not once has that been allowed. It goes beyond any reason why a motion or a bill brought forth by a private member for debate would not to be votable. It is long past the time in a modern British style democracy when any private member motion would not be votable. This has to happen.
I know the government will not act on this. What does it mean to the government to have a few more farmers going broke? A few tens of millions of dollars a year in extra costs to farmers due to crop losses does not seem to mean a lot. We have seen the government's response to the agriculture crisis in the past. It does not seem to be that important, so I do not expect that it will be acted on this time, although I am somewhat hopeful because the province of Alberta and other provinces are now stepping in and telling the federal government that we need this back on a permanent basis.
While I have not seen any reaction from the federal government in the past, maybe the pressure from the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in particular will force the government to reconsider this foolish move it made seven years ago and restore to farmers a concentration of strychnine of 2% or higher so they can effectively control Richardson's ground squirrels and gophers. I believe this is important.
Again, I would like to express that I have some concern talking about this issue when the House should be focusing strictly and in a serious way on our national security. With what happened in New York and Washington and finding out that the targets were much broader than publicly known, we have to focus on that.
However, this issue is important to people in my constituency and it is important to the farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and parts of Manitoba.
This is important. It is important to the farmers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and in parts of Manitoba. I hope for once the government will respond to what is really important to farmers. It has taken too many tools away, including the tools for farmers to market freely into other countries, which has cost farmers dearly. Let the government at least restore this one small tool which will save farmers tens of millions of dollars.
I would like to ask for unanimous consent to make this motion votable.