Madam Chairman, I want to thank the House for permitting this debate today. Agriculture is a very important industry in my riding and around the country. As others have pointed out, it accounts for a big chunk of Canada's production every year. It annual GDP is about $14 billion. We need to take it more seriously than we do. We take it for granted because it has been around for so long. So many people live in urban areas today and they sometimes take for granted the food that arrives in their grocery stores.
The truth is that there is a crisis in agriculture today. I want to compliment the hon. member for Selkirk--Interlake for raising this issue on behalf of the Canadian Alliance. I would also like to point out some of the other agriculture critics who have made an issue of this. I am speaking of people like the hon. member for Cypress Hills--Grasslands, the hon. member for Peace River, the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville and people from all over Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba who are really pushing this issue and are standing up for farmers.
I want to take a moment to talk about the impact that the drought has had on my riding of Medicine Hat. Medicine Hat is a large area in southern Alberta and has been hard hit by the drought of the last couple of years. I thought the best way to explain what is going on is to touch a bit on some of the crop reports that were written by Alberta agriculture through the summer. These will give members an idea of what the agronomists have said about what is going on in southern Alberta. I will mention some of the specific areas that make up my riding.
Let me go back to mid-July because that is when we were really starting to understand that there would be another serious situation for the second year in a row. Let me quote from the crop report of July 17. Here is what it had to say about Foremost:
Things are very dry down here (like that's a big news flash!). Crop insurance has been very busy with calls from farmers wondering about turning cattle out into cereal fields and spraying out cereal crops completely. I have been working on a sawfly survey and have found moderate levels of infestations. Pea canola/mustard pods are starting to fill but the number of seeds in each pod is disappointing.
This is what it said about Medicine Hat:
Dryland yields across the district are expected to average in the single digits. The hot dry weather will now result in shriveled kernels and low bushel weight. Where height and volume permit, producers are salvaging crops for greenfeed or grazing.
About Taber, it said:
The relentless hot and dry conditions are taking a toll on dryland crops. Poor soil moisture conditions and the prospect of severely reduced yields are forcing producers into a salvage mode harvesting as greenfeed, silage, or grazing as the situation allows.
If I skip ahead a couple of weeks, this is what it had to say about Foremost:
Crop insurance has been assessing many, many acres and yields are being pegged at 1 to 3 bu/ac in a lot of the spring seeded cereals.
That is one to three bushels just for perspective. On dry land in an area, a typical crop would be 20 to 25 bushels an acre. Members can see it is pretty desperate.
The report went on to say:
Hail passed through a scattered area to the south of Foremost and Etzikom, further complicating harvest. Peas and chickpeas will be the bulk of combined acres. Most of these crops are very short, so harvest losses are expected to be significant.
This is what was said about Medicine Hat:
Total precipitation measured at Medicine Hat since April 1st to date is 46 mm. July rainfall stands at 10 mm. Less than 50% of the dryland seeded acres will be combined.
Let me skip ahead a couple of more weeks to August 14 and what it said about Foremost:
Harvest continues to progress. Reports of yields are even worse than expected for most farmers. There have been no more showers and continued intense heat which means what acres there are to be harvested are coming off at a record pace. Fall work will be very limited unless there is some substantial precipitation soon.
This is what was said about Medicine Hat:
Combining is perhaps 30% complete and salvage of crops for feed and grazing continues. Most producers are only combining a portion of their dryland crop and a considerable number of producers have no harvest at all. The highest yields that have been reported on individual fields is 15 bu. per acre, but 5 bu. per acre is closer to the average and less than that is common.
The damage from drought, grasshoppers and wheat stem sawfly are very evident.
Harvest is also starting in the irrigation district. Yields are expected to be below average due mainly to water rationing.
It goes on and on. I will skip ahead to September 11:
We have come through the driest 24 months since records began in 1886. From September 1999 to August 2001, Medicine Hat received about 12 inches of precipitation. This is over 3 inches less than the previous 2 year dry spell that ran through parts of 1928 to 1930. Producers are preoccupied with securing feed and water for livestock. Very little post harvest field work is being done.
It is the same for Taber and Foremost. It is a complete and utter disaster in my riding. I do not know of any other way to say it. When we fly over that area, as my colleague was pointing out a few minutes ago, or drive through it, the pastures are not brown. They are grey. The hon. member for Lethbridge was pointing to meteorological reports that were suggesting that pastures might take as long as three years to ten years to recover.
Prairie fires are burning. When they come through they burn down to the roots. There is no moisture in the soil. A tremendous wind came up the other day and blew the prairie grass off the top of the ground. Usually that wool is so tough it holds the soil in almost any condition, but after so much drought even the prairie grasses are blowing off the top of the ground. It is absolutely desperate.
That is bad at any time. It is especially bad coming at a time when prices are low and when the government has completely and utterly failed to listen to the opposition when it comes to fixing some of these programs. I do not know how many times we have raised the fact that AIDA is a disaster. It was supposed to be a disaster program. It is a disaster itself.
We have pointed out that the government sends out 20 page forms that farmers cannot figure out. Farmers spend a thousand dollars getting accountants to figure out the forms for them, only to find out that they do not qualify. It is a thousand dollars that they do not have. The situation is desperate.
This spring the Canadian Alliance proposed about a half a billion dollar injection into agriculture because the situation was so desperate. I am sad to say that Liberal members voted against it and that it was defeated. That is a shame. When one considers what the government spends its money on today it speaks volumes about what its priorities.
Every time we come into the House we on this side raise issues of government waste and mismanagement. We went through the billion dollar boondoggle last year, where the human resources minister was under so much fire because about a billion dollars had not been accounted for and was ill spent by the Department of Human Resources Development. Money just disappeared and a lot of the money was used, frankly, for patronage reasons.
We have farmers who are in a desperate situation through no fault of their own. It is time for the government to step up to the plate. In 1996 when the United States government passed the freedom to farm legislation it was spending about $7 billion a year on agriculture. Today it is up to $31 billion in subsidies.
Canada has not matched that. As a result we have seen commodity prices continue to be soft because the Americans and the Europeans are dumping so much grain on to the world market and depressing prices that Canada cannot keep up. Our farmers are being pounded as a result.
It is time for the government to recognize the desperate situation faced by farmers. I urge the government to set aside some of the partisan behaviour we have seen with respect to this issue, reallocate resources from some of the low priority programs and put them into agriculture to help these people out.
People on farms produce a lot of things but what they really produce is good people who need help right now. This party does not very often ask for much from the government. We do not demand money for many things. This is one time when we are united on this side in asking the government to stand up for farmers, open up that wallet a bit and ensure that farmers today can look forward to the future with a bit of hope.