Mr. Speaker, as the critic of the Bloc Québécois for agriculture and agri-food, it is with enthusiasm that I support my colleague from Montcalm concerning the motion to maintain supply management. The government must not do away with supply management.
The largest part of farm income in Quebec comes from sectors organized under the supply management system, particularly the milk sector. This system has the double benefit of providing decent income to our producers and skewing world markets.
In fact, the supply management system deserves to be better known in other countries and might even be part of the solution to the world farm crisis. The federal government, which is responsible for trade negotiations, should believe it.
Supply management is based on three pillars.
Production is restricted through a quota system. A milk producer buys a quota, that is, the right to market a certain quantity of milk, to ensure that it meets domestic demand, but does not result in overproduction, which would cause prices to fall.
With production restricted to need, prices are regulated to prevent excessive fluctuations. Prices are established to ensure producers can cover their costs and feed their family.
In order to maintain the balance between supply and demand, the borders are closed through the imposition of high tariffs on imported poultry, eggs and dairy products. Thus, imports cannot upset the balance.
It is essential to maintain all three pillars. If one of them falls, the whole system crumbles. For years, the federal Liberals have pretended to support supply management. But each time the system has been attacked, the government has helped to weaken it.
Ottawa is a poor defender of supply management. Take butter oil, for example. Ontario's chemical ice cream industry wanted to stop using cream in manufacturing its ice cream in order to reduce production costs. It wanted instead to purchase as a raw material an American mixture of milk by-products and sugar called butter oil. Giving in to the industry lobby and abandoning Quebec's dairy producers, the federal government ruled that butter oil is not a dairy product, which made it possible to open the border to imports. In the five years from 1997 to 2002 imports of butter oil rose by 557%, representing a loss of half a billion dollars for Quebec dairy producers.
A similar tangle ensued over imported cheese sticks. Only the Bloc Québécois's vigilance in bringing this issue before the public forced the government to go back on its decision to issue additional import permits.
Let us take a moment to analyze Canada's role in the World Trade Organization; once again, let us repeat that supply management is not negotiable in this context.
Ottawa hesitates to support supply management in WTO negotiations. The agricultural issue is at the heart of the current round of WTO negotiations. The supply management system has been criticized by a number of member countries which want Canada to abandon it and open its borders. The United States and New Zealand have already taken the issue to the WTO's arbitration tribunals.
The worst thing in this story is that Canada has been a member of the Cairns group for many years, in order to influence WTO negotiations, even though all these countries object to the continuation of supply management.
A cabinet memorandum obtained by the Bloc Québécois in the spring of 2003 indicated that Ottawa would be ready to abandon supply management if that doing so enabled it to obtain a significant reduction in other countries' agricultural subsidies and better access to their markets.
That is the position Canada took at the last WTO ministerial meeting held in Cancun in September 2003. Ottawa indicated its willingness to let the WTO set limits on its ability to charge import duties. But we know that supply management involves borders being kept closed through high duties.
Had an agreement been reached in Cancun, that would have been the end of supply management. Fortunately for Quebec's producers, the meeting ended in failure. But it is not over, because negotiations between officials are ongoing, and another ministerial meeting will soon be held.
In this context, we in the Bloc Québécois believe that the Liberal government is prepared to let Quebec down in order to please western Canada. We can see the role played by Canada among its allies in the Cairns group, and it is easy to conclude that Ottawa is prepared to ruin Quebec's agriculture in exchange for growth in grain exports in western Canada. In cooperation with Quebec's agricultural community, the Bloc Québécois intends to fight to prevent this from happening.
The thing is that western Canada and Quebec have different agricultural bases. In western Canada, agriculture is characterized by monoculture farming with a large proportion of GMOs grown in export oriented megafarms. Grain producers are calling for total free trade in agriculture to stimulate their exports, and the elimination of agricultural production subsidies worldwide, because these subsidies have caused prices to collapse, which affected their incomes.
They have a very active lobby in Ottawa, which has succeeded in convincing the federal government to support their position. This is no surprise in light of the fact the agricultural system in Quebec is different from that of the majority in Canada.
Conversely, the supply management system governs the production of poultry, eggs and dairy in Canada. In Quebec, which accounts for 47% of Canada's dairy quotas, supply management production account for 61% of agricultural income in Quebec.
The prosperity of rural Quebec depends in large part on maintaining the system of supply management, a system with many advantages.
Despite the present crisis in agriculture characterized by price decreases triggered by foreign subsidies and, in the case of beef, by the mad cow crisis, dairy revenues did not go down in 2003. As a result, Quebec fared less badly than Canada last year. This indicates the advantages of supply management. On the other hand, supply management, unlike subsidies which enable farmers to sell their crop below cost price, does not skew world prices.
The current government is attracting a lot of criticism. Jean Grégoire, past president of the Fédération des producteurs de lait du Québec, has said “Governmental inaction will destroy dairy production.”
On September 16, 2003, Laurent Pellerin also said in connection with the WTO conference at Cancun:
We have understood that, if Canada had had to make the choice between concessions unfavourable to producers under supply management and not signing the agreement on the table, it would have opted for concessions—let us be up front about this, great vigilance will have to be exercised.
This is why I support the bill introduced by my colleague this evening without reservation. The financial and personal situation of our Quebec farmers is of the utmost concern to us and I feel that this will ensure them of a better future without the fear of losing income they have worked so hard to earn.