Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned that in the early 1990s a leap of faith was asked for with regard to the free trade agreement. He also suggested that a lot of misinformation about Kyoto was out there.
I would like to point out that he is asking for a huge leap of faith by farmers and agricultural producers.
This morning at the agriculture committee we heard the deputy minister in charge of the research department of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food say that the department had done no thorough cost benefit analysis of the cost of Kyoto on agriculture. This is the agriculture department that has not done the work.
When I walked away from that meeting I thought the agriculture department was completely incompetent for not having done that analysis, but then I realized there was a second option and one that I think was more accurate, which was the fact that it did not want that information. The department knew the results and chose not to do the work. The information that we do have comes from a study in the United States. It says that farmers will likely be paying 30% more in input costs if Kyoto goes through and that their farm incomes could be cut from 25% to 48%.
Obviously we are looking at higher energy costs if Kyoto is put in place because the energy companies will have to either buy credits or change their technology, which will drive up the costs of fuel, fertilizer and chemicals. Clearly, farmers in Canada will be less competitive. The United States has said that it will not ratify the agreement which will cause us to be less competitive on the world market.
There is no mechanism in place for sinks or carbon sequestration yet and it looks to me like this will be one of the biggest central planning initiatives that we have ever seen in Canada.
The member himself is involved in a sector in agriculture where he can recover his costs by raising prices. I am wondering why he is so determined to hammer the grains and oilseed sector and defend an accord that neither he nor I know the effects of. We know it will have negative effects but we do not know what those effects will be. He is supposed to be representing farmers and producers. Why is he so eager to support the accord?