Madam Chairman, I begin by thanking you for allowing this emergency debate to take place. Throughout the entire summer farmers across the country have been dealing with one of the most severe droughts in recent history. In other areas of Canada farmers have had too much rain. All in all farmers have not been given the most ideal conditions within which to work. However that is part of being a farmer. Some years are good; other years are devastating.
My riding of Cypress Hills--Grasslands and the ridings that border it, particularly those of Battlefords--Lloydminster, Saskatoon--Rosetown--Biggar in Saskatchewan, and Medicine Hat and Lethbridge in Alberta, have been hard hit by the drought this summer. My constituents in southwestern Saskatchewan are mostly grain farmers and cattle ranchers, people who live off the land and need to produce to make a living.
In southern Alberta producers are faced with a similar situation. Ranchers do not have water for their cattle: farmers do not have water for their crops.
This spring, as I looked out the window from a little commuter plane between Medicine Hat and Calgary, it was interesting to see that the grass never did green up in that area. It stayed dry and grey the entire summer.
Tough times are nothing new to farmers. Grain farmers have been struggling with unstable commodity prices for many years. The present low commodity prices in the grain and oilseed sector are due to the excessive subsidies our competitors receive in the United States and overseas in Europe. These subsidies cause overproduction and distortion in certain agricultural commodities which drive down world prices.
In Canada farmers are not fortunate enough to have the strong backing of the federal Liberal government. For some reason the government believes that if it weans producers off subsidies and leaves them on their own they will become lean, mean, farming machines. However, in order to run a viable farming operation and stay in business, producers must make or at least have the opportunity to make money.
Farmers today are faced with an uphill battle and the government should be there to support them. The agri-food industry in Canada is the fifth largest industry in the country. It accounts for almost 8.5% of Canada's gross domestic product. This $95 billion sector of the economy is not insignificant and it is worth fighting for. One in seven jobs in Canada are tied directly or indirectly to agriculture.
United States wheat farmers receive 49% of their income from subsidies, while their European counterparts receive 52% of their income from the government. Our wheat farmers receive less than 13% support. At the same time it is delivered to farmers in convoluted income support programs like AIDA and CFIP. It take months and even years to process applications under these programs and in the end they deny support to many farmers.
Tonight we heard that Saskatchewan received a big portion of that money but in fact 46% of the applications were denied and rejected. That is not an indicator of a successful program.
It is a rather strange situation because farmers do not want to be dependent on subsidies and the government does not want to give them money. The ideal solution to our agriculture problems would be to reduce all trade distorting subsidies internationally. The only way to remove foreign subsidies is by negotiations through the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. This is a long and arduous task and can take years to complete, especially when players like the U.S. are now spending $20 billion a year in subsidies.
We must get moving in this regard. The agriculture discussions have been delayed long enough. We need to have some results in that area. The government does not have a choice on this issue. If it wants an agriculture sector in the country it must be willing to support it.
The Alliance has done some polling and released the results early last week. Canadians across the country want to support farmers. In that survey we saw that 78% of Canadians felt farmers should receive subsidies to help them compete until farm subsidies in other nations are lowered, even if it means subsidizing farmers for several years. Our poll of both urban and rural areas does not leave anything to question, yet the government still does not seem to get the point.
Livestock producers on the other hand have been fairly fortunate over the last few years, but the drought this summer changed that radically for them. As I mentioned, flying from Medicine Hat to Calgary the land never did green up, but one of the more concerning things was that we could watch the dugouts go dry. We could actually see from week to week as the water level went down. A lot of them are now dry.
Ranchers are resorting to hauling water and feed so that they can hold on to their cattle. If they are unable to do that, often they are forced to sell off part of their herd. Usually at times like this ranchers would be able to work with the PFRA to find a new water source or to install pipelines. However this year the budget for the PFRA was exhausted just four days into the fiscal year and currently up to 500 projects in Saskatchewan alone are on hold.
It appears that the priorities of the agriculture department are out of step. Would not reallocating more financial resources to the PFRA so that ranchers could find water be the logical thing to do during a drought? Producers are being faced with so many challenges right now they do not need the government to be another one as well.
A few weeks ago I received a letter from a constituent who operates a ranch in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. He wrote:
My family has raised cattle in this area since the 1880s. I've been associated with our operation over 30 years of my adult life. Never before have I had no livestock feed to harvest. We have had no irrigation or stock water releases in the 2001 season. Also, there has been no production on our native pastures for the past two years.
This livestock producer is not alone. There are many people like him in my part of the world. When feed crops fail to yield anything, ranchers have no recourse since they cannot effectively use crop insurance. Instead they must compete with U.S. producers in buying feed at very high prices.
One program ranchers can normally depend upon during especially dry seasons is the income tax deferral program. This summer the minister announced which regions of Canada would be eligible to use the program. He announced that relatively early in the season.
However restrictions placed on the program prevent producers from using it effectively. The tax deferral applies only to breeding livestock that are a year or older. This summer many people were forced to sell off their calves and feedlot owners were left in the dark altogether.
The tax deferral program is a relatively simple program, however the restrictions that are placed on it do not help producers. The government should open up the program to either more types of livestock or it should extend the tax repayment period over three years, or extend the tax repayment period until the land recovers.
The government realizes that it cannot remain silent on this issue. This drought could be the financial wall that will force many producers into bankruptcy. For years farmers have struggled with an income crisis and now they have a drought that has eliminated all production for many of them.
The government needs to discover a new commitment to agriculture. I admit that we have some members on the government side who have an interest in agriculture but the government in general has no heart for that sector. Agriculture is important and we need to support it. We also need to take a look at our spending and examine how it is taking place.
Last spring our party called on the government to allocate an additional $500 million in emergency aid to farmers. Rather than do that the government's response was to appoint a task force. The task force went around the country to meet and to discuss the same issues that were discussed by the government for the last nine years. It will not have a report until a year from now. That is not good enough. The government has been in power long enough. It needs to figure out where to spend efficiently and effectively in the agriculture sector.
I found it interesting that over the last few weeks we heard about aircraft manufacturers, airplane businesses and auto manufacturers coming to the government requesting money. There seems to be a clear and immediate interest in providing them with financial help. The agriculture sector has come to the government for years and the requests have fallen on deaf ears.
Why do they get such a quick response and the agriculture sector does not seem to? I would suggest, and I would hope it is not the case, that some of this may be geographic or may be the result of location.
The government needs to give farmers a chance to succeed. One of the ways it can do that is by providing voluntary marketing in western Canada. It needs to open up opportunities for people to thrive in their communities and to diversify.
The government needs to aggressively get after the United States and the European Union. It needs to go after their subsidies and get them reduced so that we can survive. I find it hard to remain calm on this issue.
My staff assured me that I did not need to come in here and yell and holler today so I have tried to abide by that. It is frustrating for me to continue to talk about these things time after time and not see a commitment to change, to examine programs and to come up with new ideas and new ways of affecting and improving agriculture for our farmers in this country.