Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to reply to the supply motion brought forward by the opposition.
As I said in my question to the Leader of the Opposition, I do not agree with a large part of the motion for a number of reasons. However there is a portion of the motion that I feel is important, which is that we should be dealing with farm income programs and that we should be dealing with the support we provide to producers on an ongoing basis, to refine it and to make it as effective as we possibly can. I have been doing that since I became the minister last July. I am not doing it in the way suggested by the hon. member, to just, by a fiat, have something changed, but rather by doing it according to the Constitution.
Agriculture is a federal-provincial responsibility and, of course, I work with my provincial colleagues, as well as, and this is very critical, working with members of the industry.
However let us try to understand what the motion is all about. It is not about the opposition trying to help producers. If it were about that, there would be solutions in it, but they are not there. It is not about trying to actually get something done, because if it were the opposition would have suggested a process that would need to be employed to get it done. But no, it has not made that suggestion. It has suggested something that is not possible to do.
Why would the opposition suggest that? It is because this is not about helping producers, not about the commitment that the government has to help producers in this country, which we demonstrate day in and day out, no, it is about pure, unadulterated politics. First, not helping producers, that is simply not factually correct. I will demonstrate clearly that we do that.
In terms of dealing with the options around CAIS, trying to purport that nothing has been done on that, that all of a sudden one day the opposition walked into the House and for the first time wanted to have it discussed and dealt with and that this had to do with the fact that the opposition one day woke up, that is rubbish. The reality is that on this side of the House we have been dealing with these issues that are important to our producers on an ongoing basis day in and day out. That is the absolute reality.