Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sault Ste. Marie.
I rise today to support the motion, but with some caution. It states:
That, in light of the numerous recent disasters affecting agricultural communities across Canada and the government's failure to deliver timely financial relief to struggling farmers, whether by the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) program or other programs, the House call on the government to immediately drop the CAIS deposit requirement and honour the commitments it has already made to Canadian producers.
Many of my colleagues have already spoken today of the challenges faced by our farmers and our farming communities and how a well-intentioned program can cause great harm instead of helping those it was intended to aid.
Many of our farmers are in an absolute crisis. I come from a rural community on Vancouver Island that has been adversely affected by any number of current government policies, including its indifference around BSE.
I would like to speak a bit more about the people affected by the BSE crisis and, in particular, talk about how the government's spotty record of supporting our farming industry is really hurting our farmers.
Our rural and agricultural communities are the backbone of Canada. There are many small farms in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan run by farm families trying to find niche markets to build a successful business. I want to talk about two of those families.
I first met Auke Elzinga when he stopped me at our local farmers' market to talk about BSE and how it affected him as a dairy farmer. Mr. Elzinga has been a lifelong farmer in our community, but I must point out that Mr. Elzinga has actually had to retire from dairy farming in the year since the BSE crisis started. He was faced with the problem of having dairy cows that had reached the end of their productive years as milkers. Those cattle would normally have been sent to slaughter as cull cows and Mr. Elzinga would have got back some of the money he invested. That stopped being the case once the border closed since our slaughter capacity was too low to handle the overflow of beef cattle, never mind cull cattle from dairy herds.
Mr. Elzinga found he was only getting 2¢ to 4¢ per pound compared to the $1 per pound American farmers just over the border were getting for similar cattle. This is a shameful experience when farmers have invested their entire lives in farming.
One problem with CAIS is that it has never dealt with the systematic problems for our farmers. It could not help a farmer who had built up a herd regain the money he invested over the years and it certainly could not keep that farmer in the business.
The government needs to step back and look at the agriculture sector as a whole and stop responding only to crises. What it has failed to realize with some of these policies is the importance of food security in our country. We must protect our farmers so that they can continue to be in business.
I would like to share another example with the House, also involving my riding, and one which I do not think has been discussed in the House previously. I want to thank Pacific Sun Alpacas in Duncan for making me aware of this issue.
Alpacas are part of our farming community. For those who do not know, alpacas are a fibre producing animal from the Andes Mountains in South America. They grow a lovely soft fleece wool that is very popular. Many of my colleagues may recognize alpacas from the regular commercials on Newsworld after Don Newman's political show.
Growing alpacas is a small and relatively new industry in Canada and the many farmers involved are actively trying to build the Canadian herd to provide a wide genetic variety in sufficient numbers to support the herds here, but that takes time and the closing of the border with the BSE crisis has stopped any trade in alpacas because the U.S. government included them in the ban on ruminants.
This group of farmers has not been recognized in any of the support programs that have been forthcoming and many of them are on the edge of going out of business. This happened even though alpacas are not food animals. We do not eat them. They do not enter the food chain. They are not true ruminants but camelids. There has never been a case of BSE in alpacas.
Alpaca breeders in Canada have not been able to increase their herd size or quality because no live alpacas could cross the border. This new and growing industry has been held back. The government continues to talk about the importance of diversifying our economy, and yet when farmers try to diversify, roadblocks are put up all over the place.
As I said, this new and growing industry has been held back, but since there has been no “loss”, as defined by the government under the CAIS program, this industry has not been given any help to weather the BSE crisis. This is another failure of the CAIS program. My letter to the Minister of Agriculture on this issue still has not been answered. The alpaca industry feels abandoned by the government.
As globalization increases the costs while driving the profits in conventional agriculture, many farmers are turning to smaller niche industries to survive. They are going organic, finding new products like alpaca fibre or developing local markets in which to sell their goods, but our federal farm policy works in favour of agribusiness, not agriculture.
The CAIS program is simply another example of this attitude and policy direction. Demanding that farmers pay a deposit to the government in the hope of perhaps receiving some future benefit may help large farming businesses, but small family farms do not have $10,000 sitting around to throw toward a CAIS deposit. That money is rolled right back into the farming operation and is desperately needed in many of our small farm operations.
CAIS certainly does not support small business farmers like the ones in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan who are diversifying and trying to find of mix of farming practices that will help them weather a crisis in any one area of their operation.
My support for the motion today is given with some caution because I do not think simply removing the demand for a deposit will help our farmers stay healthy in our current economy. We need a long term agricultural policy, one that is proactive instead of reactive so that we can start supporting our farmers instead of patting their hands and saying, “There, there, it will all be over soon”.