The motion is in order and it should be supported by the House. If the government had any principles at all it would also support the motion.
The motion states:
That this House has lost confidence in the government for its failure to persuade the U.S. government to end protectionist policies that are damaging Canada's agriculture and lumber industries...
Surprise, surprise, Canadians have lost confidence. The government should visit my constituency, which is agriculturally based, and ask the people on the farm fields who are now putting their crops in whether they have confidence in the government, in the department of agriculture and in the minister. I can assure the government that the answer would be a resounding no. They have no confidence.
The government should go to the mills and the forests of British Columbia or northern Manitoba and ask the people in the schools, in the retail outlets and in the forest industry whether they have confidence in the Minister for International Trade, the government and the department. The answer would be a resounding no.
How can anyone have confidence in a government that realized softwood lumber would be a major issue but this $20 billion industry has now been virtually shut down? The government knew about it years in advance but decided to let it run its course. That is the term I heard in the last intervention. “We will let it run its course and then we will deal with the WTO”. It ran its course and right now it is having a dramatic impact on that industry.
The same thing happened in agriculture. The government let it run its course. We knew a year ago that there was a very serious problem with the U.S. farm bill. What did the minister and his department say? They said that they really did not understand the impact so they would just let it run its course and find out how to deal with it after the fact.
I must tell this House that the U.S. farm bill is having an impact on our agriculture industry right now, to the point where it may well have devastated it.
The minister of agriculture and the parliamentary secretary asked if we realized it was an election year in the United States. They said that it was really too bad that Canadian agriculture had to be impacted but wanted to know what we expected them as the government to do. They said that since it was an election year in the U.S. the U.S. would put those things into place and that Canada would simply have to stand back and enjoy it.
Well we do not have to stand back and enjoy it. We do have some solutions that we can put into place if the government has the political will to do it.
The first problem I see is that the government blames everyone else for its ineffectiveness. It claims that everyone else is at fault and even goes back to pre-1993 to blame another administration of another government.
However the biggest problem the government has is that it has lost touch with the land, with the issues and with the people.
I have a lot of respect for the parliamentary secretary, who comes from London--Fanshawe, but he probably has not seen a small rural community in western Canada for a long time. He has not seen the devastation in those communities, the boarded up windows and the people who are leaving because of the impact the U.S. farm bill has had on them.
The people around the Cabinet table do not understand primary resources. They have lost touch. The bureaucrats working in their departments right now, and I cannot say the words in the House because I will be chastized, but they do not care what is going on in those sectors.
When the bureaucrats appeared before us in committee their answers were simple. They said that what was there was there and that they could not have any more. They were not fighting for agriculture or for softwood lumber. They were simply sitting back in very comfortable positions in comfortable chairs saying “If it happens, great. If it does not, we do not care.” The problem is that they have lost touch.
No further relationships with the United States is the second problem. Politics is all about relationships. It happens here in the House. There is no science in political science. We deal with relationships.
We do not have a relationship with the United States. President Bush and his administration do not care about the Prime Minister and his government. That has been proven in many cases, not only with the war on terrorism when Prime Minister Blair was invited to Washington but also when the president visited Vincente Fox in Mexico. That proves that we are not even on the American radar screen.
I should tell members that in a previous administration prior to 1993 that was not the case.
When we have problems with trade we go there and deal with the problems. We cannot even get a meeting. The minister of agriculture could not meet with the secretary of agriculture when she was in Quebec City. That is disgusting. The minister of agriculture could not meet with the secretary of agriculture in Washington. That is disgusting.
How do we deal with issues with the U.S. farm bill when we cannot even put our positions forward? That is ineffective and that is where we are right now.
The same thing happened to the Minister for International Trade when was dealing with the softwood issue. As was mentioned by my colleague, the provinces were meeting with people down there but our own government would not go and fight our battles. It was a totally irresponsible position which is why the motion is actual truth. Canadians have lost confidence in the government because of those two issues.
The U.S. farm bill will devastate our communities. The government and certainly the parliamentary secretary of international trade do not understand some of the issues with the farm bill. The first issue is the very serious subsidy to American commodities of $180 billion. I just saw a report today that says depending on how the crops come in and what they plant that could be up to $200 billion and more, depending on how much subsidy they have to pay to their producers. It is astronomical. We as Canadians have to compete in order to keep our people in the game.
The second problem is the type of subsidy paid to what commodities. We used to have at least some specialty crops that we could depend on for some cashflows in our industry. The problem is that those specialty crops, the pulses, the legumes, the peas, unfortunately, will now be covered by subsidy in the United States. This has never been done before in history but all of a sudden Mr. Bush, in an election year, for heaven's sake, has decided to do it. Because there is an election this government will let him cover new commodities in their subsidy. Is that not wonderful? We will just stand back and let them do that. In the meantime, the producers in western and eastern Canada cannot compete.
The last and most important thing about this Draconian piece of legislation in the United States is that in two years, and I am putting everyone on notice now, the Americans will be demanding country of origin labelling. Everything that is grown, produced and raised in this country will have to be labelled Canadian under the country of origin labelling. When it goes into the retail stores in the United States with a label stating it is triple grade A American beef or triple grade A Canadian beef, which one do members think the Americans will buy? We need to stop that now.
The parliamentary secretary will probably tell us that we need to wait because it is an election year in the United States. He will probably say that we need to stand back and let the United States put in the clause but that in two years, when the clause comes in, that it will be dealt with.
We have lost confidence in the government and in those two departments. The motion should be supported and passed in the House.