Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to address my party's motion on misplaced priorities.
The waste perpetuated by the government has been tremendous. The sponsorship scandal, the gun registry and the other mismanaged government programs should not exist and should not have been allowed to continue once they were known to have gone askew.
The waste is bad enough in the best of times but the problem is compounded because this is not the best of times for Canadians. Our health care system has been slashed and hospitals have been closed. We have a shortage of doctors, long waiting lists for life-enhancing surgeries and access to diagnostic equipment is limited.
High tuition fees and the prospect of an overwhelming debt load is discouraging our young people, the people who will take care of us, from pursuing higher education.
Our cities and municipalities, struggling to deliver services passed on to them by other levels of government, cannot provide the essential infrastructure, such as roads, public transit and affordable housing, that would allow them to prosper.
Our armed forces personnel risk their lives serving in hostile areas in the world without the protection of modern equipment.
Police and other authorities are fighting a losing battle to make our streets safer from sexual predators, guns, drugs, gangs and organized crimes. They do not have the resources or the manpower to eliminate crime, and when they do overcome these obstacles, our justice system often sends the offenders back out into society with the most minimum of penalties.
Agriculture has been battered from a series of problems: drought, grasshoppers, subsidy wars, trade disputes and the ongoing mad cow crisis. Our agriculture sector is in ruins.
No, this is not the best time for Canada, and that makes the blatant squandering of our financial resources even worse.
The motion before us today, that the government reallocate its resources from wasteful and unnecessary programs, such as the sponsorship program or badly managed programs, such as the gun registry, to address the agriculture crisis at the farm gate across Canada, is an important and timely suggestion.
Canadians are tired of the waste and of no one being accountable. They are tired of seeing the need all around them, yet not having the government respond in a meaningful way.
Today's motion is not about asking Canadians to shell out more money to help save the industry, rather it demands that the government make some common sense decisions about programs that are not working but are eating up vast amounts of resources. This is not rocket science. Ordinary Canadians do this every day when managing their own resources and budgets.
I am from Saskatchewan, the heart of the prairies, where agriculture is an important way of life. The west has been hit hard by this crisis, as has every region across the country. It is a national problem requiring a national solution, a solution that takes regional differences and needs into consideration.
According to the dictionary, agriculture is a science. It is an art or practice of cultivating the soil, producing crops and raising livestock and, in varying degrees, the preparation and marketing of the resulting products. This is a basic definition. However, in Canada agriculture means much more than that. In some cases it represents a long held family tradition passed from generation to generation. Agriculture is a business, one that affects thousand of workers and transcends our borders into the global marketplace.
Agriculture is still a developing field. Innovation, science and initiative have resulted in novel best practices that have improved production and allowed us to circumvent some of nature's obstacles.
In Saskatoon, for example, we are known for research into the field of agricultural biotechnology.
Finally, agriculture is also part of our identity as Canadians and has a direct influence on our quality of living.
Let me cite some facts. The agriculture and food sector in Canada is the third largest employer. It accounts for more than 8% of our national GDP. It is clear that a healthy agriculture sector is vital to a healthy Canada, yet we find ourselves in a position where 2003 realized net farm income is expected to hit negative $13.4 million nationally.
In Saskatchewan the number will be negative $465 million, a drop of 177% from 2002. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, what would you do if your income went into the negative margins 177%?
Government aid programs are not designed to handle such an influx of problems this serious, let alone a situation like BSE where we are cut off from trade with the United States.
It should have been clear that more needed to be done after we saw the fallout of the discovery of the first case of mad cow last May, yet reports say that Health Canada scientists warned that proposed measures to curb the disease were inadequate. The warnings went unheeded and that reveals a level of arrogance that goes beyond being unprepared.
It is easy to lay blame and point fingers but that is not what our farmers need right now. What they do need is action, not a year from now, but today; not months from now, but today. They need help and they need it now.
As we have heard from my colleagues, we have a plan that would address short term needs as well as future considerations. The member for Battlefords—Lloydminster has itemized what needs to be done to help save this industry. For the short term it means topping up the 2002 Canadian farm income program payouts from 60% to 70% to a full 100% coverage; increasing processing capacity for mature cattle as well as all other livestock sectors; establishing a mature livestock rationalization program; creating a Canadian agriculture income support program top up for BSE affected farm operations; supporting interest free cash advances; and, convincing lending institutions that the Canadian government will support producer cashflow. Those measures would cost about $900 million, less than half the cost of the gun registry program.
In the mid-term an additional $100 million could help us continue to press for North American trade, particularly with the U.S., to return to its normal state; establish testing regimes for all non-North American markets; work toward integrated continent-wide rules on processing with regard to identification, handling and disposal of specific risk materials rendering protocols and trace out programs; and, support educational and promotional programs for domestic consumption of home-grown livestock.
Canadians have been extremely supportive of the beef industry during the BSE crises and it is imperative that we remain and maintain that confidence. In the longer term we can work to expand our market base by increasing our presence in countries, such as China and Russia. Like any industry, agriculture will prosper from growth in developing new markets.
All this could be accomplished at no cost to Canadians. It is a simple matter of directing money from programs that are not garnering appropriate results to ones that will show immediate and long lasting returns.
By essentially ignoring the crises, our government has put not only the agriculture sector at risk but also the many spin-off industries that rely on agriculture. Doing so, while continuing to waste money on ineffective programs, such as the gun registry, which is widely acknowledged as a complete failure, is insulting as well as irresponsible.
It is our duty as parliamentarians to ensure that government is doing all it can as efficiently as possible for Canadians in need. The need of farmers across the country could not be more apparent.
On behalf of the farmers and the agricultural producers in my riding, I ask my colleagues here in the House to support the motion. I ask my colleagues to send a signal to Canadians that we will not let the agriculture industry sink any further.