Madam Speaker, I want to say a few words on this very important debate before the House today about the vision we have for rural Canada and the lack thereof by the federal government.
I have been around the House for a while and have seen various government policies over the years and there has been a real lack of national vision regarding rural Canada and what will happen to the rural part of our country.
It is getting worse all the time. Recent evidence of that is the American farm bill which is in its last week of winding its way through the American government process and will give a subsidy of $171 billion to American farmers. That will be absolutely devastating to the farmers of this country. That is $171 billion over 10 years. They have already had a massive subsidy. The Canadian farmer now gets about 9¢ on the dollar from the federal government, while the American farmer has been receiving about 35¢ on the dollar from Washington. Of course when it gets to Europe it gets even worse. The European farmer receives about 55¢ on the dollar from Brussels.
On top of those things, we get the American farm bill, which is another $171 billion. I do not know what the calculation of that will be but it will certainly be very devastating to the farmers of our country. It is a national farm bill. It applies to British Columbia right through to Newfoundland. Pulse crops will be included for the first time now.
I was on a plane on Friday with a Saskatchewan farmer who said that the American subsidy now for a bushel of peas was about $5.95. It is just absolutely incredible in terms of having any of our producers even survive this kind of devastation that is hitting our country. Therefore I consider this a very important debate here in the House today.
When I look at the prairies and at my own province of Saskatchewan I worry about another problem, the problem of drought. The year 2001 was Saskatchewan's driest year in recorded history. It was dryer than the 1930s. I think the driest years in the 1930s were 1936, 1937 and maybe 1938. The devastation to rural Saskatchewan, the rural prairies and rural Canada has been incredible. We had very little snow during the winter and very little rain this spring. When I fly over the prairies it is brown. A disaster is coming down the chute and obviously the minister across the way is aware of it.
We have drought and we have low international prices caused by massive subsidies in Europe and in the United States compounded now by the ever increasing subsidies by the Americans under the American farm bill. Those are recipes for an absolute disaster.
This is a human tragedy. One just has to look at the census results across the rural prairies. Even in the province of Alberta, which has tremendous revenues because of oil, gas and bigger cities like Edmonton and Calgary, many of the smaller towns and villages in the rural areas are disappearing. Since 1995 almost every single riding in Saskatchewan has suffered a population loss and that is before the American farm bill has even been passed.
It is a strange situation when we hear George W. Bush and the Americans talk about the importance of free trade and how they are champions of free trade and yet we have greater protectionism by the government of the United States than we have seen since the 1930s with the American farm bill, softwood lumber in British Columbia in particular and the subsidies now in the American steel industry. It goes on and on.
It is a very important economic issue for Canada that our federal government take a very strong stand with the Americans. This is not just an economic issue for the prairie farmers or the rural people in the small towns and villages, it is a national economic issue of great importance to our country. We must stand up and fight as hard as we can to make sure we protect the farmers of Canada.
The second thing that is very important is that farmers need help. The federal-provincial agriculture ministers from across Canada are meeting today and tomorrow at the Marriott Hotel in Ottawa. I am sure the federal minister will hear from all the provincial ministers about the need for help particularly on the prairies. The federal government has reduced price support programs since 1993. It has cut back on price support programs in accordance with the WTO.