Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comments. I agree with him. I know he comes from eastern Canada. I come from western Canada and our province right now is in the driest period since the 1930s. We are going through a cold spell now. Someone said the other day that the snow did not melt, it just wore out. We are that dry.
I want to tell the member that we have 40 federal fisheries officers in the province of Saskatchewan given to us by the federal government who cause great havoc to our rural municipalities. We cannot put a culvert into a road with a dry slew on each side. There has not been water there for 30 or 40 years but there may be a little dip. If we want to put a culvert in, just in case we do get some water and the fields might flood in the spring, we cannot do it without getting a permit. It takes these guys six weeks to two months to get a permit to put a culvert in. It is totally absurd. We have rules and regulations from fisheries officers. There has never been a fish in some of those slews. It is a Liberal priority.
We have farm families who cannot put food on the table. They are well educated with university degrees. The hon. member talked about educating people. Most of the agriculturalists I know are well educated. The majority of them have university degrees. I am hearing that we must educate these people. We do not live in overalls and chew straw. The farmers drive tractors with GPS. They seed. They know how to conserve the land. We fertilize, look after the land and conserve it the best possible way but we have a major catastrophe going on. We have a drought in western Canada and the Liberal government just stands back and studies it.