Mr. Speaker, I will look at the issue of fiscal imbalance with Quebec's farming community in mind.
As the BlocQuébécois leader put it, the Prime Minister did not use the premiers' conference in Ottawa to tackle the entire issue of fiscal imbalance, especially with regard to agriculture and agri-food.
My colleague the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot contends that the PM did not have the political will to meet people's needs. He chose instead to cater to the wishes of the Liberal caucus, which blamed him for having already given away too much, and to tighten the fiscal imbalance stranglehold on Quebec and the provinces. Go tell Quebec cattlemen, extremely hard hit by the mad cow crisis, that Ottawa has given Quebec too much.
Here are some numbers. Faced with problems in agriculture because of fiscal imbalance, the Quebec government is forced to fill the space left vacant by the federal government's lack of support. Let's look at this in context.
The OECD, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, measures the support given by various countries to their agricultural sector. It publishes yearly a manual on agricultural policy follow-up and evaluation in member countries, The manual contains a set of indicators measuring various facets of support.
An analysis of these different indicators clearly demonstrates the following. The level of support provided in Canada is among the lowest, and is far lower than in the U.S. or Europe. The level of support has been markedly on the rise in the U.S. in recent years, contrary to the drop already referred to in Canada. On May 2, 2002, Congress passed a bill providing an increase of $31 billion over six years in subsidies to American farmers.
Now, to look at the situation in Quebec, where the government compensates for insufficient level of federal support, which is not the case most of the other provinces. In Quebec, 63% of public expenditures in the agrifood sector are assumed by the Government of Quebec.
When this support is expressed as a percentage of the agricultural gross domestic product or GDP, if we exclude Newfoundland, where agriculture is not a major activity, only Quebec provides support in excess of 20%. The figure is around 10% in Ontario and only 6% in B.C.
We in the Bloc Québécois are of the opinion that the federal government must accept the idea that there is fiscal imbalance in Canada. The federal government must recognize that Quebec farmers, particularly those hard hit by the mad cow situation, are victims of that imbalance.
In its brief to the Quebec commission on fiscal imbalance,the Union des producteurs agricoles made the following statement:
The problem of fiscal imbalance, which this commission is mandated to examine, is defined as the result of the fact that the provinces have insufficient revenues to meet their responsibilities in the areas over which they have jurisdiction, while the federal government has funds surplus to its needs for the funding of activities within its own areas of jurisdiction. It is very obvious that the roots of the problem are not to be found in agriculture or agrifood.
What are the consequences for agriculture? Overall, the problem for agriculture relates to the fact that the level of government with money to spare seems to have an increasingly poor grasp of the role it ought to be playing in agriculture, which is in particular to help Canadian producers compete on an equal footing with their counterparts elsewhere.
Support for the agricultural sector in Canada is in decline. Some people believe the federal government does not have a good grasp of its responsibilities in the agricultural sector. This statement is based on information reported in documents taken from the Public Accounts of Canada, collected over a number of years, and the budgets of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food in its Farm Income Data Book .
The figures show that between the beginning of the 1990s and the 2000 decade, federal government expenditures on subsidizing the agricultural sector were cut in half. Relatively, the proportion of the federal budget going to agriculture and agri-food dropped from nearly 4% to less than 2%.
I will say it again, the analysis of various OECD indicators clearly shows the following facts. The level of support in Canada is among the lowest and is much less than that offered in the United States or in Europe. Subsidies have been increasing in the US for several years, in contrast to the decline in Canada as reported previously.
Let me tell you about the trends in three OECD indicators: estimated producer support per full-time farmer equivalent; producer support estimate per capita; and finally, total transfers as a percentage of GDP.
In Canada, producer support per full-time farmer equivalent was US $9,000 in 1999 and much less than the US $21,000 offered in the United States or the US $17,000 in the European Union.
Over the past 10 years, the size of Canada's subsidies has dropped substantially and then had a slight revival. During that time, while support in the United States did decline, by 1999 it was above 1986-88 levels.
In order to measure the effects on the public of the levels of support provided in various countries, the OECD estimated the total aid to the agri-food sector on a per capita basis.
Canada offered a subsidy of US $163 per capita in 1999, only half as much as did the United States, at US $350, or Europe, at US $336.
Over the period of a decade, per capita support for agriculture has dropped by US$105 in Canada, while it has increased by $73 in the United States, $11 in Europe and $18 on average for OCDE member countries.
The third indicator, the total in transfers in percentage of the GDP, also shows that Canadian government support for agriculture is among the lowest in the world. In 1999, Canadian government transfers to the agriculture sector totalled .78% of the GDP, compared to 1.05% in the United States and 1.49% in the European Union.
All this information suggests the same thing: the level of support for the agriculture sector in Canada has declined substantially over the past decade while our major competitors have maintained or increased their support. At the time, the current Prime Minister was the Minister of Finance and, thus, responsible for this significant decline.
As we mentioned earlier, the Government of Quebec compensates for the federal government's disengagement, but that is not the case in all the provinces.
In Quebec, as you probably know, for decades now, the work done by our farmers and their representatives has contributed to convincing Quebec governments to provide better support for the agriculture sector. The Government of Quebec compensates for the extremely low support from the federal government.
This situation paints a very good picture of what we describe as the fiscal imbalance in Quebec, particularly how the shortfall affects the farmers.
The data mentioned earlier indicate that the agriculture sector is receiving almost half as much support in Canada as it does in the main competing countries, despite the efforts made by Quebec to compensate for the inadequate federal support.
As trade between countries becomes increasingly freer under international trade negotiations, one wonders whether in the medium and long terms, Canadian farmers will be able to sustain such unfair competition. It is not surprising, in such a context, to see that for almost a decade in Canada, one crisis after another has hit farm income.