Mr. Speaker, our colleagues from other regions may not be aware of the change in the Crow rate which used to subsidize the exporter transport of raw materials out of western Canada to processing facilities elsewhere, for example, in eastern Canada. I suppose an example of this would be the tie-in with the Canadian Wheat Board, which really is not the Canadian Wheat Board but is actually a western Canadian wheat marketing monopoly. There is a misunderstanding of the concept of those things which many colleagues in the House may still retain.
With the Crow rate demise, what happened is that shipping costs for agricultural families, farm producers, escalated considerably. This changed the cropping practices of much of the land base in western Canada. For example, Manitoba has just surpassed Prince Edward Island as the leading producer of potatoes in the country. There are two major potato processors within my riding, Simplot and McCain. This has resulted in expanded potato acreage.
Potatoes have to be hauled by heavy trucks. The use of our roads has changed dramatically. The wear and tear on our roads has changed dramatically, but the method of funding the construction, repair and maintenance of those roads has not changed significantly. What has happened is we have shifted an onerous burden onto our local governments and our provincial governments in this respect.
One example would be that the Trans-Canada Highway, the national highway system, through much of western Canada was designed to allow for overpasses to be built over the highways. The roads are brought together very closely in many locations. Those overpasses have never been built. What is happening now is the B-trains, the big long potato-hauling and grain-hauling trucks are pulling out into the intersections and blocking the Trans-Canada Highway to the detriment and danger of the people travelling down the highway and to the people doing the hauling.
We need an investment in a national highways program. We need that gas tax reinvested in the jurisdictions which need those investments to be made urgently in the interests of the safety of the citizens there and the citizens who travel across Canada.