Mr. Speaker, as my colleague for Calgary Northeast was speaking, I was thinking that the motto for the government seems to be “give a nickel, steal a billion”, and then expect people not to say anything.
We are here today to talk about agriculture, which is in a crisis situation as many of us who have rural areas in our riding know. I am glad to see that once again the opposition is leading the way on this issue. We have a government that is saying very little about it. It does not seem to understand the crisis we are in. It is hard to find government members in the House who are even concerned about agriculture. The opposition has carried the day and it has been good to see that.
We all know the story about BSE and what happened in this country. One cow was found in Alberta and the CFIA was able to trace it back to its source. We thought the industry was going to get back on its feet after having the border closed for months. Just when it seemed the United States was going to open the border, a second cow was found in the United States and it was traced back to Canada.
Our industry is being driven into the ground and it is frustrating for ranchers. I have received a lot of calls over the last month as people have realized that this is not going to be a short-term problem. It will last longer than they expected. They are almost at the end of their first year of trying to deal with this situation.
This is not just affecting ranchers. A lot of other people are being affected as well such as truckers and auctioneers. Up until Christmastime, retailers did not seem to be affected that much, but in talking to them since Christmas, a lot of them have expressed concern.
Farmers do a lot of shopping in the fall. They buy machinery and that kind of thing. Ranchers tend to do a bit more of it in the spring. When the season stopped for farmers, there was nothing, and ranchers did not pick up the business. A lot of the agricultural implement dealers are feeling the stress and strain as well from this crisis. There are others as well such as farmers who grow feed wheat. They find themselves in a situation where ranchers cannot buy that wheat from them. It is tough.
Over the last few weeks I have noticed that more people are calling and the calls are more desperate. Before, they were concerned, but now, we are getting to the situation where young people are starting to look at losing their property. Young ranchers are being told to go back to the oil patch and to work there in order to save their ranches. That is not the long-term answer for these folks.
One of the problems that I have had through this whole situation is the fact that the government has completely failed to plan or to lead the ranch and farm community through this problem. They have received many promises from the government. We heard again today from the minister. He is good at saying how much he feels our pain, but he is not so good at getting anything done.
The government has failed in a whole number of areas. One area I can think of is feed regulations. The government has refused to deal head on with the issues of what to do with feed, how to regulate it, and how to regulate the companies that are making it. The government has not taken the initiative there.
Opening the border is obviously a very important issue. The government seems to be doing nothing. Something may be going on behind the scenes, but ranchers do not understand what it is. The government is not talking about it in the House. That is unfortunate because the border needs to be opened quickly for ranchers to do well.
I had a big concern last summer with the government's commitment of $500 million to ranchers and the ranching community. That money seems to have evaporated into thin air. I know it was spent. The problem is that none of the ranchers I know received any of it. They are paying the biggest price. They are suffering the most and they needed that money. It disappeared into thin air. Someone received it, but it was not the ranchers.
The government now has a $200 million program with regard to feeding culled cows through the winter. In my part of the world, that has turned out to be a disaster too because the provincial government cannot come to any agreement with the federal government about how to administer the program. As of the end of January, farmers were not able to get access to the money from the federal program.
It is unfortunate that there is an NDP government in Saskatchewan because it seems to be drilling our province into the ground. Our province is getting in worse shape. The Saskatchewan government is unable to cooperate with the federal government. And we have a federal government that is not able to put a plan or program together that will work for farmers.
Another area the government has failed is in setting the regulations for testing in Canada. Farmers and ranchers do not have any idea what the government plans for the future. I honestly do not think the government has any idea what it wants to do either.
We have heard from the minister. Producers have been very patient with him so far. He seems to be saying the right words, but producers are going to get impatient very quickly and will get tired of hearing promises and nothing else.
It is not just the ranchers that are in trouble. The grain industry is in a deep hole as well. The prices are at not all time lows but they are very low right now. There are shipping problems with the railway strike that is going on, but also a lot of problems with the whole grain marketing system in western Canada and most of it is focused on the Canadian Wheat Board.
Farmers have not recovered from the disaster that they had in 2002 and 2003 when they pulled out of the market when it was at its highest because they did not want to sell grain to the board. It had not done any planning for the future. It had not locked in any futures, missed the high, came back into the market at the low, and set the initial price too high and ended up with an $85 million deficit in the pool accounts. Thankfully for the farmers but not so for the taxpayers. The taxpayers had to make it up.
It was incompetence on the part of the marketing done by the Wheat Board and it ended up costing a lot of money.
The Wheat Board, as we know, limits opportunities for grain farmers in so many ways. We have organic farmers coming to us now that are protesting the buy-back. In the past, they have been allowed to sell their own wheat and they have been able to do that very well. As soon as they started developing a successful market and a successful industry, the Wheat Board stepped in and said that it needed its share, and that it had to take a cut too. Now it is starting to drive the organic farmers into the same situation as it has done with the rest of the farmers.
My biggest concern with what is happening in western Canada in the grain industry, and it is tied again to the Wheat Board, is the fact that farmers are not allowed to process. I have a lot of small communities in my riding. The people want to survive and thrive. They would love an opportunity to process the product that they grow the most of and that is grain.
Unfortunately, even though we have 125 speciality crop plants in our province because people can process their own products there, we have less than 20 flour mills in the province that mill grain and most of those are owned by two American multinationals.
I heard members on the other side say that they were on the side of farmers, but they were defending the millers and the Wheat Board more than they were the farmers when they insisted that the system stay the way it was.
The sad part of it is that farmers do not have control of it. The minister still has control of the Canadian Wheat Board. If farmers had control of it or had control of their own destiny, many of them would be marketing their own grain and doing well at it, as eastern Canadians farmers have been doing over the last year. Once they got the freedom to go into the Ontario Wheat Board or stay out of it, it is interesting that they have done very well going into the United States with their own wheat.
Therefore, we look for some opportunities. Unfortunately, in many ways the government is restricting those farmers, particularly in western Canada.
I want to speak a little about CFIP, the farm income program and what a disaster that it has been. Unfortunately, from 2002, the government paid out about 75% to many of the farmers. Now it is clawing money back from the producers saying that it needs to claw some of their money back, so that it can get everybody up to 60%.
It is the position of our party and our agriculture critic that we would commit to ensuring that 100% was paid out. The government will short the farmers by 30%. We are not prepared to do that. We would like to see farmers get what they are supposed to receive. We would step forward and certainly do that for producers. It is unfortunate that the government does not do that as well.
The new CAIS program does not look like the answer that everyone thought it would be and that is unfortunate.
One of the other things I want to talk about is an issue that we thought there was a lot of hope for. We had an application for an ethanol plant from Shaunavon which is in my riding. The guys put a lot of work into the project and put a good proposal together. They waited patiently to see if the government would approve their project. Ten days ago the government informed them that they were not going to get the funding.
Instead, one of the projects went to a multinational company that made $350 million in earnings in the fourth quarter and made $1.8 billion last year. It apparently needed that $14 million from the federal government for its project, while our local community group, that could have used that $14 million to get the project up and running, did not get the funding.
It is unfortunate to see once again that it looks like the backroom boys who have been in charge of the political connections received the money. Meanwhile, people in our small communities are not able to move ahead because the government is restricting them.
I would like to see the government support agriculture as much as it has supported our Prime Minister as he continues to pay 2% taxes while the average Canadian pays 50%. The government does not seem to be willing to stop that.
The government has supported the EI program as it has taken $7,000 per family in extra premiums over the last 10 years. The government has also supported the gun registry to the tune of somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion.
I wish the government would support agriculture with that same kind of enthusiasm.