Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my hon. colleague who I have known for a very long time. I know he defends his constituents very seriously. The hon. member across the way cannot disassociate himself however from the motion that is before the House. The motion that is before the House is before the House and I cannot bear any responsibility for writing the thing. It is here before us.
Second, I am not saying that we do not need to put more money into the programs that we have. Like everyone else, I made a speech in the House last week urging the Minister of Finance, when we had the prebudget consultation, to improve upon the funding that is there, and to, yes, obtain more help for our farmers. I do not think there is a rural member and probably a whole bunch of urban ones too, who would say anything otherwise. We want to continue to help our agricultural community and to make the sector more viable.
The member said in his remarks that he does not think the issues involving supply management are related to this. I am sorry, but in the case of the constituency that I represent a good portion of the BSE issue involves a cull cow program and all of that is under supply management. Thank heavens we have a supply management system and not the position espoused by the Leader of the Opposition, when he was leader of the National Citizens' Coalition, because the misery that is suffered by the beef farmers would be suffered by the dairy farmers to the exact same degree. Not that what they are living now is a picnic because of the loss of income through the cull cows. That is not worth much if anything, but the problem is that it would be even worse if we followed that kind of thinking.
The Leader of the Opposition talks about this whole farm production insurance program that he described in the Yorkton agricultural forum on January 13, 2005. He said:
The program would be funded one-third by the federal government, one-third by provincial governments, and one-third by the primary producers.
That is a far greater amount than what farmers are contributing now. The hon. member says they cannot afford to contribute what they are contributing now and would replace it by something to make them contribute more. That is not me that said these things. That is the Leader of the Opposition. That does not make it better. It makes it worse.
Our duty should be to support the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and ask him to continue to convince the Minister of Finance to increase the help to the agricultural sector so that we can support the people that we are called upon to represent, many of them being farmers in the constituency of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell and elsewhere.