Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the bill, as I do have a number of rural constituents although my riding is now close to 70% urban. Certainly I know that 30% well and in fact I am part of that constituency.
I want to start off by expressing my total displeasure with the use of closure in the House. Closure has been used 70 to 80 times since I have been here. It used to be that the government really thought about doing something like that. In fact a government could easily fall at the next election because of the use of closure. The government now uses closure in the House like we change our socks and thinks nothing of it. I hope the Canadian people are now seeing what they have because of not watching and keeping an eye on the government and providing pressure to keep it from doing this.
As far as the bill is concerned, obviously all of us would be opposed to any kind of cruelty to animals. We have to really differentiate between what we mean by cruelty and what we mean by strict agricultural practices.
The policy of the Canadian Alliance is pretty clear on that. The Canadian Alliance in no way condones intentional acts of cruelty toward animals and supports increasing the penalties for offences relating to such acts. However, while cruelty to animals cannot be tolerated, the criminal law should not be used as a tool by special interest groups to destroy the legitimate farming and related food production industry. We will strive to ensure that the legitimate use of animals by farmers, sportsmen and medical researchers is protected.
That pretty much sums up our position and where we stand. Anyone who portrays it any other way obviously has not listened to the words that I have just said and that our party and all our members stand for. Sometimes I even think that probably Air Canada is behind the bill because it certainly is opposed to serving any kind of meat products on its planes. I think most of us are getting tired of vegetarian pizza, vegetarian omelettes, vegetarian fajitas and all those things.
Let us talk about the bill itself. The critical point is that this is an assault on agriculture. The farmers see it as nothing else. They see an ongoing assault. We have to remember that farmers are 1.9 million Canadians creating about $26 billion in exports. In the province that I come from we have hundreds of trucks heading south with cattle every day to serve the huge market in the U.S., which adds directly to our GDP and is so important to our standard of living and what we all have in this country.
This attack on the agriculture industry has been going on for a long time. I suppose it has been going on from the beginning of the country's existence. There are all kinds of examples. We could talk about the Canadian Wheat Board. Certainly the people in my constituency feel that while it is an agency that was needed in the 1940s, it is now subject to real questions about marketing and about whether a bureaucracy, a monopoly, is the way to sell grain products. They feel that it is an assault on their rights and particularly when it only applies to the prairie provinces. It does not apply to farmers in Ontario, Quebec and so on. They definitely see that as an attack on the west.
As well, of course, and more recently, we had Bill C-68. I received 13,000 letters in my riding telling me to vote against that legislation. Obviously 13,000 letters on anything tells us what they thought about it and obviously they have been proven right. It does not work. Licensing and registering farmers, ranchers and duck hunters is not going to work and it is certainly not going to make any difference to the crime situation.
Then there is the bill that I have been involved with as the environment critic, Bill C-5. Again the people of my riding feel that is a direct assault on them as individuals and as farmers. They feel that the bill has to include compensation. If it is in fact going to affect their livelihood and their way of life, they obviously have to be compensated.
Bill C-15B is just another example of their concerns not being taken into consideration. They do not want anything special. They want to be treated as an industry that does the very best job. I must say that most of the farmers and ranchers I know care about those animals a lot. Those animals are their livelihood. They really care about those animals that do not have the calves in the spring or for some reason have been injured out in the field. They will go a long way to preserve those animals. Sure, there are practices that we may not necessarily like. Castration is certainly not a pleasant thing and neither are dehorning and those kinds of things, but they are necessary agricultural practices. The concern is that the bill will now impact on that industry. We have to remember that it is an industry providing a livelihood for a lot of Canadians and that it adds to our GDP.
As well, our farmers look at the subsidies out there, which Canada objects to. The recent OECD figures show that a U.S. wheat farmer gets 49% of his income from the government. An EU farmer gets 43% of his income from the government. In Canada the farmer gets 17% of his income from the government. Obviously they look at that and say that the government really does not care about a guaranteed food supply, that it really does not care about the agricultural industry. If the government did, it would be doing more to help farmers get over what are considerably tough times for them.
The member who spoke previously mentioned the rodeo. I do not know how many members of the House have been to a rodeo. I cannot say that I am a great fan of rodeo. I do not follow the rodeo around. I do not know how many points the people get. When I was in business I used to do a national finals rodeo tour down to Las Vegas and I saw the thousands of people who paid thousands of dollars to watch rodeo. I know that on every weekend in my constituency from now until October there will be a rodeo somewhere in my riding. Rodeo is a way of life. Those people live that very existence and it is part of the cultural base of western Canada.
I would love to take every member in the House to Daines Rodeo, just north of Innisfail, Alberta, so that they could get the feeling of being Canadian. There are Canadian flags everywhere. Girls carrying Canadian flags come in on their horses. It is quite a show. Calves get roped, but those calves almost look like they are smiling. They are used to it. They are bred for that. The horses are bred for that . There is a very specialized industry around the rodeo. It is entertainment. We can watch the NHL hockey games and maybe we think they are kind of brutal. Maybe they should be outlawed too, with no checking. The NHL could be a powder-puff league with no-hit hockey. Maybe that is what we should have. It is rough, but that is the sport. The first time I saw rugby being played in Australia, my God, I thought the players were going to kill each other.
What we really have here is an assault on the agricultural community. A rural caucus member said there is no problem, that the bill will be fixed in the Senate. That is a cop-out. That is giving in to pressure from the whip and saying what they think people want to hear. I hope that people in the riding of Dufferin--Peel--Wellington--Grey will not be conned by this sort of garbage with members saying they will vote for the bill because it will be fixed in the Senate. That is not the way to be a good legislator and it is sure not the way one should act in this House.