Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure, after much preparation, to contribute to this debate this afternoon. I also take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, who has been working full out to help Canada's farmers ever since he took the job. We know this minister's intentions and we know he is a hard worker. Personally—as I mentioned two days ago—I wish him all the luck in the world in getting more assistance from the Minister of Finance in the upcoming budget so that he can continue to help farmers and even provide more.
I should add that I listened attentively to what the Bloc members had to say. We often hear them say that our approach should be a collaborative effort with the provincial governments. Even if certain members of the Bloc enjoy making up some new truths once in a while, claiming that the Government of Canada does not always cooperate with the provinces when, of course, it always—or nearly always—does.
That said, the members of the Bloc are supporting a Conservative motion today that would provide unilateral assistance and replace a program that was constructed together with the provinces. It is not entirely clear to me why the Bloc Québécois, all of a sudden, have become proponents of centralization like the Conservatives. Perhaps that makes them centralizing separatists, in a way. Still, we will probably see, in later statements by the Bloc members, that they will clarify their position on this centralization they are supporting by supporting this motion, which wants us to replace collaboratively-constructed programs, the kind we usually have, by a unilateral program the Conservative Party wants us to impose today.
Now, as for the Conservative Party, I think it will be worthwhile if I take the few moments remaining to me to explain to the House the origins of this party and its agricultural platform.
Mr. Speaker, you and I remember quite well when the present Leader of the Opposition led the infamous so-called National Citizens' Coalition, which of course is not national, and is not a citizens' coalition, but it is just called that. When he led that organization, in February 1998 in the Bulldog magazine, which really describes the sensitive nature of that organization, he called the supply management system, which we all support on our side of the House, a “government sponsored price fixing cartel”.
What I am curious to find out and no doubt when we get into questions and answers later, a Conservative MP will rise and tell us on precisely what day the Leader of the Opposition changed his mind from calling supply management a “government sponsored price fixing cartel” to supporting supply management which he spontaneously discovered the day he became the Leader of the Opposition.
We want to know if that occurred at the same moment, weeks before, perhaps a little later, or when these kinds of changes of opinion occurred in the mind of the hon. Leader of the Opposition? The Leader of the Opposition was elected as a member of the Reform Party in 1993 and that party, predecessor of a number of MPs in the House, wanted to reduce assistance to agriculture. It is very important for all of us to know a little bit of truth about Conservative Party positions.