Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to stand to persuade all the Liberals in this hon. House that they ought to have compassion and take a serious look at the needs of farmers across the country.
I grew up on a farm, many years ago obviously. As a matter of fact my dad says that I am a child of the depression, the thirties. When we were young and growing up on the farm we were very poor. It is amazing to me that with all our technological advancements and our prosperity in the country now we have not invented a way of solving the problem for farmers when they have these downturns from time to time.
Way back then, like today, farmers faced many problems, anything from drought to too much moisture. I remember that as a youngster there was a time when we had rust in the fields. We also had plagues of grasshoppers. We had various diseases go through the crops. We had ups and downs in prices. Throughout all of that the farmers survived.
In order to emphasize the importance of this, especially in the context of what is seizing us as Canadians these days in terms of national security, I would like to point out that a solid, independent and self-sufficient food supply is absolutely critical to our national security.
There are many Ukrainians in my riding who point out to me frequently that there was a time in their history when the deprivation of food was used to destroy them as a people. It is really atrocious that we do not take it very seriously and make every effort possible to look at a secure food supply as a national security issue.
I imagine that everyone here today, especially on the other side of the House, has had a full meal or two today. We are not accustomed in Canada to thinking about real hunger. I do not know, Mr. Chairman, whether you have ever gone without food. I probably should have more than I have, but from time to time I have fasted, which is a good exercise for many reasons. To go without food for a day or two while drinking only water or perhaps juice has a number of very good effects on a person. One of the most important ones is that it really emphasizes the importance of food in our lives.
It has been said that a person can live about a minute or so without air, a day or two without water and a week or two without food. Mr. Chairman, I would probably outlast you, but it certainly is true that in a very short length of time we become dependent on food input in order to stay alive.
I think it would be a great exercise, as was suggested to me by my son-in-law, a farmer, if every member of parliament were to be asked to do a one day fast. If by the end of the first week the agriculture problem is not solved, the following week the members should do a two day fast. Then if by the end of that week the agriculture problem is not solved, they should do a three day fast, and they should keep going until the problem is solved. He said he was sure that MPs would soon discover a way of solving, in the long term, the agriculture problem that faces our country.
I think we ought to address the issue. Right now of course it is a disaster. My colleagues have spoken of areas where there is no income, where expenses and bills are piling up, where bankers and indeed the government's own Farm Credit Corporation are asking for the money and farmers do not have the ability to pay it back. It is in fact a desperate situation.
I suppose there is another way we can look at it. What would we as members of parliament do if at the end of the month we did not get a paycheque, then did not get one the next month or the month after? Then the banks would want to take our houses for not paying the mortgages, or the gas or electricity would be shut off because we were not paying the bills. We can see how quickly we would become desperate. That is where many farmers are today. They are without an income or a hope of an income and are literally facing personal disaster.
I want to mention a few things the government should do. One is with respect to user fees, which have really shot up for farmers. There is some justification for charging users the fees for these services that are supplied by government, but the fact of the matter is that these services for which fees are charged in the case of agriculture are good not only for the farmers. They are in fact for every Canadian. We should question whether or not we should charge excessive user fees to farmers when every citizen in the country is the beneficiary of the services such as food inspections and things like that supplied by the government.
I am thinking of another one that the government should do immediately. It could be done tomorrow if we had the political will to do it, and that is to have a motion that says effective tonight, or if we want to be generous take it to the weekend or the end of the month, as of October 1 we could have no more fuel tax on farm fuel. Why can we not take away that excise tax? No, the Liberal government seems to be quite content not only to charge excise tax on fuel used by farmers but then to charge GST on the excise tax itself, besides charging GST on the cost of the fuel. It is actually charging farmers, like all Canadians, a tax on a tax and it does not feel badly about it. I sometimes wonder whether government members have any conscience at all.
I think very seriously about the whole issue of trade. We presumably have an open border between the United States and Canada with the free trade agreement, except for food products. We can imagine how frustrating that is to farmers who, having a product in the bin which has value and which they can sell, are forced by the law in the country to sell only to the wheat board, but the wheat board is not buying it. They are prevented from pulling a truck up to the bin, loading their own product into the truck and taking it to a market where they could sell it. I have spoken to more than one farmer who has been in that situation. It is atrocious that in this country farmers do not have the freedom to sell their products to whomever will give them the price they are ready to sell it for. That is how the marketplace works. It works that way in every other area.
In my little town I have a number of different grocery stores to which I can go. I can choose to buy my food at Safeway or IGA. I should not have started the list. The others will be upset if I do not complete it. There is Save-on-Foods. We have all these different marketers of food. I cannot believe that farmers cannot also choose who to sell to. They should be able to make a deal. If somebody is willing to pay the price and they are willing to sell the product, let them go and do it.
I am thinking of organic farming, another area where farmers would like to break free. Can they do that? No. At every turn they have impediments from the government in regard to growing and marketing their products. In fact the wheat board will not handle organic food as a separate commodity and yet farmers are required to sell their grain to the wheat board. That is ridiculous.
I can see nothing wrong with continuing to have the wheat board, but we should make participation in it free. If a farmer gets the best price from the wheat board let him sell his product to the wheat board, but if he can get a better price elsewhere who are we in this country to pass a law to prevent him from doing that?
We should be thinking of some other things. When we go to the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread for around $1.20, depending upon where we are, the farmer gets about six or 10 cents. We could add just a little to the cost of food and give the farmer a fair market price.
There are many things that can be done. I am very sad that my time is up because I am only half done, but it will hold for another time.