Mr. Speaker, first I would like to thank the right hon. member for Calgary Centre for applying for this very important emergency debate in the House.
I have had the opportunity to travel across western Canada with the right hon. member for Calgary Centre. I find that he understands the issues and the seriousness of the issues. He understands how it affects people in communities far afield from Ottawa and urban centres. I do appreciate his assistance in bringing this issue forward to make sure there is a profile and that people do understand the seriousness of the issue.
I would also like to thank the Speaker who ruled in favour of having this emergency debate. In his jurisdiction he believes very strongly that there is a need to make sure that we put forward some positive ideas to the Minister of Agriculture who I appreciate is listening to the debate on these issues and opinions this evening.
I have been a member of the House since 1997 and nine emergency debates have been allowed. I can assure hon. members that every one of those debates were taken on the seriousness of the issue. Since 1997 six of the nine emergency debates in the House dealt with agriculture. Is that because of bad luck? Is it because of mismanagement? Or is it because there is no direction with this particular department?
The emergency debates were not about health. They were not about justice. They were not about immigration. There were about agriculture. One has to ask the question: Why is it that department particularly has not been able to deal with the issues? These issues continually come forward and yet nothing has been put into place to deal with it.
This debate is going on today for two reasons. First, it is to raise the profile and recognize that there is a serious issue in agriculture, particularly in those areas that have been affected by this severe drought, which some of my constituents have said, that has never been seen before in the history of the country. We succeeded in raising that profile.
Unfortunately, members who live outside my constituency or constituencies in western Canada, particularly in urban areas, believe that the problem has been fixed. The minister and the Prime Minister stood up and said that $5.2 billion would be going to agriculture. People came to me and asked me what the problem was. They said that the farmers received $5.2 billion in the APF fund and that should be enough to satisfy them.
What they did not tell us was that they played with numbers. It is a five year program. It is a program that has only $600 million that will be applied toward the drought assistance that is necessary in western Canada. Alberta alone put in $325 million for one province because that was needed in that particular area with drought assistance. That $600 million sounds like a lot of money but across the country it does not work.
Hay West did a wonderful job of bringing forward the profile of what was required in western Canada. The problem is that when people saw that on television they said that must fix the problem. An hon. member was very instrumental and involved in the Hay West program in Alberta. The fact of the matter is that is less than 1% of the problem is being repaired by Hay West. We thank them very much but where was the government with some sort of disaster assistance, with feed requirements and feed subsidies, so those people could feed their cattle and in fact look forward to maintaining their herds this year and perhaps into next year?
The major reason for this debate is so we can profile this and tell Canadians that the problem have not been fixed. The $600 million is not even a start to fixing the problem.
The second thing was NISA. We heard the minister say that he would put $600 million in the NISA accounts of producers and that would be the save all and be all. NISA will probably end up at about $6,500 to $8,000 per user, which is peanuts in the big scheme of things, particularly when Alberta put $325 million itself into one particular jurisdiction.
Let me tell hon. members what the stakeholders think about NISA accounts.
“There continue to be serious accessibility problems,” committee co-chair Bob Friesen said Sept. 28. “The government needs to respond to this”.
On September 28 the minister announced that he was still going ahead with an ill advised distribution of money into NISA accounts. I have a letter from a constituent in my area who says that because he had not shown a profit or had any income over the last three years he could not get a NISA account. If people cannot get a NISA account they cannot have part of the $600 million that the minister is so generously putting into the farm account. What we would like to do today other than bring profile to the issue is convince the government that there has to be a change in attitude.
My leader talked about a disaster relief program. There has been a disaster in agriculture every year for the last five years. Every year there has been an ad hoc program from the government that resolves nothing.
I would like to share something with the House which comes from a member of the minister's own staff. I hate to say it but I was a bit of a prophet back on April 30. I asked the staff member if the government was looking at the possibility of a mitigating program for the potential drought that could happen in western Canada. I told the staff member that there may not be a drought, but asked if we should not be proactive. I asked if there should not be a plan in case there was a drought. The answer was that crop insurance would look after everything.
I then asked the same staff member if he had approached the government to ask for more money in case there was a drought. His answer was no, there was enough in programs right now to satisfy the problems that would be created by a drought.
This year there will be in excess of $3 billion taken out of crop insurance. In Saskatchewan alone there has been an uptake of claims of $1 billion. Saskatchewan has, through reserves and through premiums, about $500 million. There will be a shortfall in Saskatchewan alone of $500 million this year in crop insurance. How is crop insurance going to cover off a $500 million shortfall? The last time there was a shortfall in the Saskatchewan crop insurance it took 13 years to pay it back. It was a loan from both the provincial and federal governments. There is a $500 million shortfall and it is not over yet, and there could well be more claims. In western Canada $3 billion will come out of crop insurance this year. Although there is no money in crop insurance this staff member says it can take care of everything.
The government has to think out of the box. We have had a serious problem in agriculture and it has not been resolved by the government or the ministry. The government needs to get a natural disaster program and make it available to the people who really need it on an annual basis. That is what we are talking about. Until that happens the government will continue with an ad hoc program that will not resolve any of the issues.
We need to have an affordable safety net program available to the provinces as was alluded to by my leader. Provinces, particularly Saskatchewan and Manitoba, cannot afford to put dollars into a program when they are not generating revenue from their agricultural economy. There has to be some thinking outside the box. There has to be some sort of an equalization program with provinces that cannot do that. Alberta gave $325 million because it can, and good for it. It recognizes the need to support its agriculture industry. Ontario did the same thing recently. It came up with $73 million to put into the hands of farmers because it can do it. Should we, as a government, not allow other provinces to support their agriculture industry even though they cannot financially support them right now? That is a responsibility of the government and the ministry.
I have to get a comment in from my good friend from St. John's West. There are issues not just in western Canada but issues across this country. The environment is a major one in my colleague's constituency as well as mine. There are also some issues with land costs, and I know we can deal with those. The real issue is to get the minister and his ministry on side so they can support agriculture like it has to be supported or we will not have it in this country in the very near future.