Debates of Oct. 7th, 2004

Agriculture

[David Kilgour, Liberal, Edmonton—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Chair, I made it clear in my talk and in response to the question that I think there is a serious problem with the loan provision. That has been made clear to all of us. The banks are not going to go for that. Therefore, it has to be changed and I have indicated that to the Minister of Agriculture and the President of the Treasury Board. It has to be changed quickly, because if we do not get the shovels in the ground before freeze-up in our province, it is going to be too late and the set-asides and everything else are not going to work.

We have to find a way of getting the banks, the credit unions and other people to provide money to help some of these plants, at least two or three of them, go ahead before the snow flies. The present proposal, as I have said as clearly as I can, is not acceptable to the lenders.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Chair, I have a quick question and comment. I am well aware of our counterparts in the U.S. having been to the Far East on a regular, constant basis, negotiating almost daily, working hard to try to get some contracts going and open the borders. I am also quite aware that the Japanese test every animal. Yet if testing every animal is the answer to opening the borders, then I am wondering why Canada has not opened the border to Japan. That was closed off and today it remains closed.

If our American counterparts are there lobbying hard to try for these markets, let me ask the member, where are his government's people? Why are they not over there? Why are we not on the site? Why are we not fighting hard for these markets the same way they are? Instead we stay at home and talk about what we have to do, but there is no action.

Could the member explain to me why his government has not sent a lobby group, along with our friends to the south, to the Far East on a regular basis constantly since this crisis began to work hard at getting some deals going? Why not?

[David Kilgour, Liberal, Edmonton—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Chair, the member who is sitting about a metre away from my colleague will recall that in the committee I think I suggested that we have to open our markets to Japanese animals too and to anybody else. I will tell my hon. colleague that I was in Tokyo in an earlier life and pleaded with the former minister of agriculture there to open up to Canadian beef. I agree it was not put as explicitly as he and I would have liked them to put it, but basically what he said was, “If you will test every animal, we will let your beef into Japan”. As the member just said a minute ago, Japan tests every one of its animals. How can we deny it?

I also accept the point made by the member for Crowfoot that the U.S. is very anxious to get into Japan. A lot of people in Washington seem to think we will not get into the U.S. market until Japan opens up to the U.S. and that is a reality that we seem--

[An hon. member]

The U.S. sure isn't waiting for us--

[The Chair]

Resuming debate.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Chair, it is kind of with a torn heart that I speak here again. I am very thankful to the constituents of Battlefords--Lloydminster who re-elected me to this place to continue this fight, but it is in continuing this fight that I have a heavy heart. We are a year and a half into this crisis. We are talking tonight about the very fundamental problem that we had a year and a half ago, and we are no closer to any sort of solutions.

I agree with the minister that we have to get past this partisanship and work in cooperation to try to come up with programs and policies that will see us through this crisis, and it is a crisis. It goes across the spectrum of the livestock industry. Every type of livestock out there is affected, and everybody who has inputs, or processing or handling of that livestock is feeling this crisis. They are feeling the pinch right in their wallets, so it is reflected out on the main streets right across Canada. We are seeing that. The government will see that in Revenue Canada because the taxation will not come in.

How has the government reacted? We have seen ad hoc program after ad hoc program. It has been given a passing grade on some and a failing grade on others. The problem is the government has not reacted to the failing grade programs. It continues to try to build on that flawed foundation, and that is the CAIS program.

The minister, who has only been the minister for a couple of months, is the third Liberal agricultural minister to promise a review of a program that is two years old and still has not started. People can try to get an advance from 2003, which was the first year. It takes 90 to 120 days for them to process the applications to even tell people if they qualify. That is not acceptable. We have cash-strapped farms and farm families who cannot even get a reply back from the minister and his bureaucrats.

When we talk to the bureaucrats, they say that they are ready to go. They just need somebody to push the start button. When we talk to the minister's people, they say that they do know what is holding up those darn bureaucrats. Somewhere in the pipeline it got clogged. The money is not getting through. The finance minister stood here earlier today and said boldfaced that $1.8 billion had gone out. It has not left Ottawa. Less than half of it got pried out of the finance minister's fingers, and out of that we got about a 37% administration rate on the clawbacks and everything else that is happening. the government is not helping. It is sending a message to urban Canadian consumers that it is doing everything it can to backstop that safe, secure food supply, but in reality it is not.

The Liberals are frustrating the producers out there on the land because all these programs hit the headlines in the big papers. The Toronto Star , the largest daily paper in Canada, even gives these guys a failing grade on this BSE crisis. It said that they were sleepwalking through it. That is an urban paper in downtown Toronto which gets that these guys are sleepwalking through this crisis.

How do we fix this? I guess the first thing we do is that if they are going to use CAIS as the pipeline, they have to get rid of the cash on deposit. The only way to explain that is that anyone who wants to insure a house for $100,000 has to put $20,000 in a bank account before the insurance company will sell the person a premium. That is what the cash on deposit does to farmers. If they have the cash, they do not need the program. If they do not have the cash, they cannot get into the program. It is double jeopardy and it is absolutely ridiculous. The bureaucrat or the minister who came up with that needs to be hung at dawn.

Inventory values are being based upon closing inventory rather than opening inventory. Guess what? They went down, so right away they are kicking people off the program. The ones who need it cannot get it.

Less than 25% of producers across the country had applied for CAIS as of last spring. We have those numbers from Agriculture Canada itself. There are reasons for that: the cash on deposit; the inventory values; and the problems we face year after year after year using that five year olympic average. Nobody qualifies. It is a shell game or phantom money, as our critic said awhile ago.

The problem with CAIS too is it cannot handle the program it was designed to do and now the Liberals are adding more work to it with this latest announcement of money that will never go anywhere. Announcements that are not bankable and that do not help are only a frustration. They are a hindrance and a hurdle for everybody to work around.

They want to put some money into processing and that is great and is part of the solution here. Thirty-eight million dollars will not go very far, but apply that to provincial plants that can be upgraded very quickly and apply that to existing plants that only need a floor grain moved, let us look the other way for awhile, and let us get this processing ramped up. I could go on and on for hours about everything that has gone wrong with this.

We started to have a panel that went to the OIE to say that it was minimal risk outbreak and asked for that trading system for North America. We have dropped the ball on that. Nobody else is going to help us. We have to help ourselves and we have nobody left doing that.

We still have not implemented the five points the international panel gave us a year ago in July. No wonder everyone is giving us the bum's rush when we try to sell them product. We should get on with the job at hand, forget these goofy announcements that do not help anybody and let us get rolling.

[Andy Mitchell, Liberal, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Mr. Chair, I thank the hon. member for his intervention. I just want to make a couple of passing comments and then ask the hon. member a question.

I will just read from this: “BSE recovery program $465 million, disbursed; Cull animal program $110 million, disbursed; TISP $567 million disbursed; CAIS program for 2004, $250 million disbursed”. Phantom? I think not.

Phantom payments and bad announcements, maybe he would like to reconcile that with the position of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association that indicated they were fully supportive of the initiative that was put forward on September 10 and fully supportive of its design components. Maybe he would care to comment as to why the Canadian Cattlemen's Association is wrong in that support.

On a very technical issue, the member talked about unrealized equity losses and the need to deal with them. I would be interested because I think that is important. That is an issue with which we need to deal. How would he also deal with, at the same time, unrealized equity gains and how we would do a design so that we could capture both of those if we were to deal with equity losses?

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Chair, there are a number of interventions there. I may have to have you read back the minutes so I do not miss anything.

The big thing he is pointing to is the CCA endorsement of this on September 10. There is an amazing thing to that. I think he will recognize the name Stan Eby. He is now the president of the CCA. Stan actually phoned me on Wednesday, September 8 and asked for help from the opposition party for any lobbying we could do because he could not get the minister to act on any program.

Two days later the minister made the announcement, and I read in the paper that Mr. Eby was on side and everything was wonderful. If he had been in the full consultation process, how could he have phoned me two days before and say that he could not get the minister to do something? He liked our idea about recalling the parliamentary committee and asked if we could put some pressure on these guys to get rolling. That was two days before the announcement, but the minister said that he was fully behind him. I think maybe he came on side after he saw some cash waved under his nose.

The CCA, as well as the CFA and these other folks, also say that CAIS is not the delivery mechanism. They are saying it will not work. They are already saying announce another program, but give them a vehicle that can actually deliver the program. There are still no forms on the web. The minister is talking about dollars that have been dispersed. They have not even been okayed by Treasury Board yet. He is getting the cart before the horse.

It just goes on and on. What he thinks is reality with in the Ottawa bubble is bureaucratic hog heaven because it is going around and around in this place. The dollars are not getting into the mailboxes. There is not a producer out there that wants to farm the mailbox. They just want a decent return on what they are doing. They are working hard to stay in business in spite of what the government says it is doing.

[Andy Mitchell, Liberal, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Chair, I just have a point and I know the hon. member did not mean it this way. I know Mr. Eby and he is a honourable man. To suggest that his actions were motivated because somebody waved money under his nose, I do not think the hon. member meant to say that. I think that he may want to suggest something different.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Chair, producers out there, including Mr. Eby, are grasping at straws. They will take anything that happens. They keep thinking one of these programs has to work. They cannot all be dismal failures, yet they are. We saw an announcement a month ago, and still no forms. We are seeing announcements made without consultations with the provinces that are supposed to pony up their 40%. All of a sudden these announcements come out of left field because the politics say that the government has to do something right now. Let us get the politics out of these announcements, make them practical , make them bankable and get on with the job.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Chair, it is a great privilege and a pleasure of mine to stand on behalf of the people of Yellowhead to address this issue.

This is a very important issue for Yellowhead. I take my job as representing the people of Yellowhead very seriously. This also is an issue that comes very close to home. I was raised on a farm and my full time career was working on that farm. Most of my life I was a dairy farmer. As well, I crop land farm, beef farm and I have an Elk herd. We have passed that on to our eldest son. It is the fourth generation within this--

[An hon. member]

That is child abuse.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes, I could be accused of child abuse. That is true. In some ways it is not all good news.

Nonetheless, the people of Yellowhead are very concerned about this issue. Not only are they dealing with the BSE crisis, but people in my riding just came through two years of severe drought and a severe grasshopper problem which has put them on their knees. The BSE situation is not the straw that broke the camel's back. It is the absolute life-support cases. My office my staff tell me that they are fielding calls quite often from people considering extreme situations, as much as to say that they are looking at possible suicide. When we start receiving those calls, it is very serious.

We can say that this is a Canadian-U.S. problem. I think that was described very clearly by our leader this evening, and that is absolutely true. We can say that is a solution at which we could work. As far as opening the border, we cannot control what the United States does. We certainly can control how we react to this situation in Canada and how we support the industry or not support the industry. That is exactly what we need to do.

When we talk about the United States and our relationship, I was with an interparliamentary group this spring. We went to the United States to talk to a number of the congressmen. Most of them thought the border was open. They had absolutely no idea of the intensity of the problem in Canada, nor the impact it was having. They were looking at what was happening under their own noses.

When we have a ruined relationship with our largest trading partner, it will cause absolute havoc, not only with BSE in the cattle industry, but in many of the other industries. Of our export trade, 85% to 87% is with the United States. We had better start nurturing that relationship and we had better start doing it quickly. I share that with the members in the debate because it is paramount.

The government thought the Americans would open the border by the end of the summer. Government members crossed their fingers hoping that would happen. The program is more than a year late. It is about a year and a half since the time the first cow came down with BSE in Canada. Since that time, the impact on our industry has been absolutely devastating and it has been described in many ways.

In the little time I have left I want to talk specifically about the program that was announced on September 10 and how it has miscued. First, I have to address the problem of the other ruminants that have been impacted just as severely as the beef industry, namely elk, deer, bison, sheep, goat and lama. These individual producers, through no fault of their own, have been impacted by BSE. It is not about science; it is about politics. It is the worst kind of politics that has influenced and impacted these agricultural communities. We have to support them.

We were looking for some sort of indication in the throne speech for support for the agriculture industry. We did not get that. It is unfortunate because the agriculture industry is certainly looking for it. It needs it now. The industry is questioning whether the government is playing politics not only with the United States, but with the lives of farmers and those of their families. I saw that happen with the government over this last summer, and it has to stop.

I was on the phone just a few hours ago with the ministry of agriculture in Alberta. I asked about the program and about the intense conversations with the federal government. The inflexibility with the dates has to stop. The minister said that he will have a program that will be flexible. He had better back that up. The flexibility has to be there and we have to understand the difference.

Alberta represents 45% of the beef industry in the country. It needs the ability to be flexible and it needs to understand that it is part of this program as well. It needs to be respected to that degree.

When the set aside program was first announced it was going to be 40% but now it is being talked about backing that off to 28%. I would like the minister to comment on that. I would also like to know whether he will allow October 1 to be the start date of this program.

We also have to understand that just because the set aside program is there, these individuals will get $200 as long as the animal does not go to slaughter. They have to be able to sell that animal and not be restricted to the point where it depreciates to a value that is not any good.

I could go on but I know my time is up. There are lots of things I could say about this program not meeting the needs of farmers and they have to be addressed by the government.

[Andy Mitchell, Liberal, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Chair, the hon. member talked about another important issue with regard to other ruminants and the importance of dealing with them as well. With respect to the program that I announced regarding the development of increased slaughter capacity, it would apply to them but they have their own set of issues.

I just want to mention to the hon. member and all hon. members in the House that a sheep summit, which my department helped to organize, is taking place here in Ottawa tomorrow morning. I will be meeting with a range of producers and others in their value chain, specifically with the sheep industry, but others as well, to address their issues. I am appreciative of the member bringing out the fact that there are other issues such as ruminants.

I agree with him with regard to his other point. We do need to make sure that we have flexibility in the program. I quite clearly demonstrated that. Contrary to what other members have said, I have met with my provincial colleagues on four occasions since being made minister essentially to consult on how to put together this particular BSE program. We have to make sure we have a platform that works for all of the provinces. I understand that it is important for Alberta and a percentage of the industry. However the needs and concerns of other provincial players who have a significant portion of that industry need to be taken into account as well.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the minister's comments with regard to other ruminants. It is unfortunate this program has taken so long to come forward, really at the 12th hour. The minister has not consulted with regard to other ruminants which have been terribly impacted. I challenge him to make sure they are looked after.

I appreciate that he is meeting with the sheep and goat group tomorrow. I have also talked to those groups. I have also talked to individuals involved in the elk, bison and deer industries which have been impacted just as severely. Some of them have been impacted more so because of a chronic wasting disease in the elk industry which has impacted them for three or four years. They are into their fifth year of absolute disaster. However I do respect what the minister said.

With regard to this program being flexible, he is absolutely right in the sense that all provinces have it differently and the way the provinces approach the program will be somewhat different. I challenge the minister to be flexible enough to recognize the needs of the provinces and the fact that they are part of this program, and that when they come up with solutions, to be flexible. In speaking with the minister's office today I understand that those negotiations have been rather rigid. I impress upon the minister to make sure that this program actually works. We are here to help the minister, the government and all Canadians by holding the minister's feet to the fire.

I was a little upset this summer when the minister went into the meeting saying that he would consult this summer. However when we asked for the ag committee to be struck in July so a program could be in place sooner rather than later, our request fell on deaf ears. I find that absolutely appalling.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Chair, it is a pleasure to stand and speak in this chamber for the first time. I must say, as many others before me have said, that it is truly an honour to stand here and speak. We have all read newspaper reports and watched other parliamentarians on television but to be here is something that is both very humbling and a great honour.

I was also told that at the first opportunity I should stand and say some words about my riding. I want to thank the voters of Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre for placing their trust in me. I should also say, as probably every other rookie MP has, that when people think about what they are going to say they do a little practising in front of the mirror or speak out loud.

I have to tell everyone a story. Just this morning one of my staff members overheard me practising what I would say if I got up on my feet. Unfortunately I said that I would like to thank the voters of Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre for the wisdom they placed in me. My staff member said that would not only be highly inappropriate but highly inaccurate. I want to be sure to thank the voters for placing their trust in me.

I do not profess to be an expert in agriculture. I am far from it. I am somewhat in awe of all of the learned colleagues around me speaking on this issue, but I do know a couple of things through consultation with producers in my constituency and the research that I have done. It certainly appears to me and I think I can say without equivocation that the CAIS program is a fundamentally flawed program.

I do not know, however, one simple thing. I have heard all of the problems associated with CAISP on many different levels and I have heard many people say that it could be problems with the bureaucrats or problems with the politicians.

I would ask the member for Yellowhead one simple question. If he were minister for a day, would he please expand upon and quickly provide to me one or two things that he would do to ensure one simple thing, how he would get money to the producers in a more timely fashion.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Chair, the member is absolutely right. CAISP is being used as a vehicle. CAISP is absolutely swamped. It has been a disaster for the time period that it has been in existence. Now we are asking it to administer another program that was announced on September 10. If we are going to do that, then we have to add the resources to the program and to the people who are administering the program in order for it to comply with the things we are asking it to do. If we fail to do that, then we are asking for disaster.

The member is absolutely right, and others have spoken about it this evening, the CAIS program is not meeting the needs and is not getting the money into the hands of the people who need it the most at the present time, the farmers. The farm gate is where the money has to be and it has to be there now.

[Paul MacKlin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Chair, it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to stand before this august group this evening and to discuss the issues before us.

Last week I had the opportunity in my riding of Northumberland—Quinte West in Ontario to meet with the executive of my local cattlemen's association and to discuss with them for a period of two hours the issues that they saw within their area and what they felt we ought to be doing.

I know that each and every one of us when we come to this place would like to come with solutions but sometimes in a take note debate we also have to come with a sharing of support for others who have worked within the system and have done immeasurably good work and to give them credit.

I know when we spoke last week the farmers were concerned, and it has been expressed tonight, as to how we get the details of this program that has been set forward. How do we find out when it will start to actually move forward? Tonight we have actually heard from the minister some of those timing elements and where they actually will come into play.

I believe there is a true focus at this point in terms of going forward with this. It has been a process to get to this focus that has taken some time. We cannot simply reposition an entire industry in the wink of an eye, especially when we sit back and look at how we have gotten to this place. I think a lot of us held hope that the border would open earlier and that in fact we would have that opportunity to once again engage in the harmonized North American market.

However, as luck would have it, and as it has turned out that did not happen, we at least have been able to establish within the industry at large that in fact a repositioning was something that was meaningful and that had to be followed up with.

Repositioning is obviously something that takes time. It does not happen overnight. The reality is that it appears that all of the players within the areas of concern have been working together to try to achieve this goal.

What we see represented in the thinking and the philosophy that was presented by the minister this evening is a positive philosophy and approach. I do believe there is opportunity now for us to try to put some balance back into the market, get some money into the producer's hands and to build that capacity that we were talking about that seems to be missing.

One of the issues that I would say we want to pay respect to in this process of BSE, has to do with those who have been dealing with the safety of our food. We are all concerned about the safety of the food we eat and the drugs we take. It does not matter whether we are talking about the beef industry or any other industry where our food safety is concerned. We clearly want to take all the precautions that we should to make sure that the industry is protected.

In this particular case, BSE is something that really did have some elements of protection built in through the system that we have in Canada. I think it is important that we review some of those processes that are there.

As it has been said a number of times today and on previous occasions in this House, we have one of the safest food supplies in the world. I cannot disagree with that. Canada has a multi-layered system where we are always working with a network of federal, provincial, territorial and local government departments, ministries and other agencies that combine with the private sector to make sure we are protecting the food from gate to plate.

Through the emergence of BSE in this country, Canada has had very unfortunate consequences for our cattlemen and the cattle producers, but at least we can say from the positive side that the detection and diversion of the infected animal away from the human food chain demonstrates that the Canadian food safety system worked in the detection and response to that threat.

It is extremely important that we note that, once the first case of BSE was confirmed, the full spectrum of partners within the Canadian food safety system became engaged. It was well demonstrated that the various departments and agencies came together, and CFIA did take the lead and did a very positive job for us.

There is a great deal of importance to be placed on this because if our food safety system is not in place and operating well then what happened with this one animal could have had absolutely unbelievable consequences with respect to what has been previously demonstrated tonight in debate concerning the confidence of the Canadian consumer.

As we look at this issue, clearly that has been a very important part of the acceptance of our safety system by other countries because they have looked at us and they have seen the reaction of our consumers to our system. It is very important that we look at that as a measure of protection in the public sector that has been positive.

For example, taking the specific risk material out of our food chain at the point of slaughter was announced in July 2003. That was a very important part of this process and of course that specific risk material is composed of tissues that in BSE infected cattle contain an agent that may transmit that particular disease.

In diseased animals the infected agent is concentrated in tissues located in the brain and spinal cord. Many international observers have marvelled at the fact that there was no mass panic among Canadian consumers and that there was not the mass hysteria about the safety of beef in this country that there was in Europe and in Japan when the disease first emerged in those parts of the world.

The fact that Canadians have continued to buy beef during the months that followed the detection of that first case of BSE is reflective of the high level of confidence that Canadian consumers have in our food safety system. That consumer confidence was not altered even after the finding of that second Canadian cow that had BSE in the United States. The public confidence in our food system was very important.

Canadians believe that every effort is being made to provide a food inspection system that ensures that sick animals do not get processed into meat and that our government food inspection authorities verify the removal of the specific risk material at slaughter, and ensure that the proper processing and packing practices are followed in this country.

It is important that we acknowledge the great work done by the government officials who worked so hard and effectively to ensure that the right mechanisms were and are in place to manage these issues on our behalf. The public's trust in our food safety and food inspection system is extremely important. If it were not for CFIA and Health Canada being pro-active in developing a number of counter measures to deal with these threats, the results could have been significantly different.

When we look at this whole issue, it comes down to a great deal of reliance upon science and the science-based approach to dealing with this issue. Yes, we are having difficulty convincing some of our trading partners that it is the basis upon which we should go forward. However, that science is what has made and helped to maintain our consumer in this country as a positive force in this fight to keep our beef producers in business.

I want to thank everyone who is engaging in this debate. It is important that we do so. I certainly hope that we will look forward to days in the very near future when this will be something that was just an event that happened in the industry and we have recovered.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Grey—Bruce—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Chair, it gives me great pleasure to speak through you to the hon. member across the floor.

My first thoughts were that we should take a sample of what was in his glass tonight. He started out very clearly representing that Canadian food was not safe. We have the safest food in the world, bar none.

As said earlier by my leader tonight, our consumers in Canada proved to us how safe our Canadian beef was. The last figures that I have seen show consumption in this country having gone up a little over 5%. Although the member recovered a little later on in his comments, I took exception to that. I think it needs to be pointed out that we have the proudest farmers and the safest food in the world.

[Paul MacKlin, Liberal, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Chair, there is no question that is true. I want to emphasize tonight that fact that has been developed through a system of mutual respect. I think the respect is for the agencies that we have in place and the wonderful job that they do in inspection, setting out guidelines, and establishing specifications for the way in which our meat is slaughtered, ultimately packed and transported.

Within our agricultural system we have the concept of protection from gate to plate with the tracking system. As the minister mentioned tonight, he is prepared to work with others who do not have the tracking system but would like to have a tracking and tracing system in place. He is prepared to look at and work toward establishing that in other areas.

Clearly and without any question Canadians respect the system that is in place. Our consumers have actually increased their consumption of beef which I think is an absolute and complete endorsement of the way in which we are protecting food safety in this country.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the remarks of the hon. member and parliamentary secretary. I would like him to ask the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, who seems to have travelled extensively in Canada, to visit Abitibi—Témiscamingue, which is not too far away, just to take stock of the catastrophic situation that has been caused these past few months.

The government has introduced five programs, none of which are working. Initially, the CAISP was supposed to be in place for a very short time, between six and twelve months perhaps, until the borders reopened. Unfortunately, it was not foreseen that the situation would continue, as it does to this day.

Ways must be found to adapt the programs to the regions, rather than adapt the regions to the programs. If the hon. parliamentary secretary could bring this matter to the minister and ask him to adapt the programs to the regions, and not the other way around, this would already go a very long way toward resolving the problem.

[Paul MacKlin, Liberal, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Chair, the hon. member has a point that in fact we need to always be reviewing existing programs to ensure that they fit the needs of the people in the various regions.

It is very difficult to find programming that will be universal without having to make fine tuning adjustments. The minister has indicated that a review process is an ongoing process in terms of programming to see whether in fact there can be improvement.

Each and every one of us knows that when we look back at the programming, and in particular when we look back at CAISP although there is criticism of CAISP, it was a program that was developed after many months of consultations from coast to coast with group after group after group.

At the end of the day, yes, there are still areas that need to be re-examined and looked at to see if we can fine tune them to make them more responsive to the individual. It is always a challenge to get meaningful national programs.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Chair, like many of my colleagues, I am speaking for the first time in this great legislature. I would like to take a few seconds to very sincerely thank the voters in my riding of Regina--Qu'Appelle.

My riding does have a significant rural component and that seat had been held for almost 40 years by the NDP. Yet, this election they placed their trust in myself and in the Conservative Party to represent them. I know that my party, my colleagues and critics will not let the riding down. I will work my hardest over the next few months and years to ensure that I do not let them down either.

Like any good rookie member of Parliament, I have read my Marleau and Montpetit from cover to cover and I know that I am not supposed to point out the absence of members in the chamber, so I will not mention the complete lack of NDP members of Parliament in this debate; however, I think that their absence here has a direct correlation to their electoral results in the last election because they have ignored Saskatchewan.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order. If the hon. member opposite, as he indicated, had read Marleau and Montpetit from cover to cover, he would know that he cannot say who is or who is not in the House during debate, and he should be corrected for that and brought to order.

[The Deputy Chair]

You are absolutely right. He forgot about that page but he now remembers. The member for Regina--Qu'Appelle.