Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise here tonight and speak to this issue. I am sharing my time with the member for Burnaby--Douglas.
We are here for yet another emergency debate about agriculture. In fact my very first speech in the House was in an emergency debate on agriculture. At that time I made the point that there have been more emergency debates on agriculture than on any other issue that has come before the House in the last eight years. I am beginning to wonder why we continue to have these debates because nothing seems to change.
In light of this latest R-CALF move, we have crossed a political Rubicon here. This is the move we have been waiting for and fearing. We saw this move coming for a long time and now it has arrived. We are going to be bogged down in a long and nasty protectionist battle, just like we have been bogged down in a battle on softwood.
The question tonight is whether we are positioned, as the government says, to rebuild our domestic economy for beef and to move forward with a long term domestic solution for agriculture. The fact of the matter is the answer is no, zero, nothing, because the government has played its hand. The Liberals presented the budget in the House just a few days before the R-CALF decision came down and we got to see what their five year plan for agriculture was. It was a big zero.
I have to say, as I mentioned in a question previously, anyone remotely interested in the cattle issue in Canada could have seen that R-CALF injunction coming. We knew it was coming, yet the government seems to have been caught completely without a plan. It just crossed its fingers and hoped for the best. Anyone remotely interested in the viability of rural Canada could have said that 2005 is expected to be the year of bankruptcies across Canada, because of two years of this crisis coupled with commodity problems right across our sector. Equities have been burned up and farmers cannot hold out any longer.
We have the R-CALF injunction coming down at the same time as a five year plan in a budget that has made no attempt to address the long term issue of agriculture in Canada. If I were a tycoon or a foreign investor, I would probably be dancing on Bay Street right now, but to the rural farm families of Canada the budget has offered them nothing. Here we are coming through the deepest agricultural crisis since the dust bowl and all we are getting from the government is platitudes.
I had hoped that we were moving forward and that the government were serious, but having seen the government's response to this, I am beginning to think that our poor agriculture minister has become the cartoon character, Mr. Magoo, of the BSE crisis. I do not think he or the government would know rural despair if they fell over it, and that is what we are talking about. People are giving up. They were looking to the government for a solution.
When we talk about extras on the loan loss guarantees, that is not good enough. In the face of this crumbling rural economy, the government continues to stall for time. It is crossing its fingers and hoping for the best.
I will give for the record the response of our august finance minister. In today's National Post he summed up his government's response:
We've begun to analyze the exact nature of the government response that's required here.... I think it's still too early to say exactly what the nature of that response must be but it's under active consideration.
If we read the subtitles, that is no plan, no backbone and no desire to do anything to help the farm families across Canada. In fact this has been the same lame bleat that we have heard from the government for the last two years on this crisis, that it is repositioning our industry, that it is restoring a domestic economy, yet there was absolutely nothing in the budget to address the mounting agricultural debt that families are facing.
There was nothing in the budget to encourage young families to take up farming. We see right across rural Canada the rising stress levels of an aging rural population and young people have absolutely no incentive to take up farming.
In my own region in the north we are trying to maintain a healthy northern rural economy. Because all the farmland in southern Ontario is becoming too difficult or too zoned in to farm, my region would be a perfect region in which to expand. The only thing the government came forward with was that it was going to cut the agricultural research station in Kapuskasing. That was its commitment to northern agriculture. Obviously it is not worth the government's time to invest in winter hardy crops that are needed in the north.
Then we fall back on the one thing that was in the budget, the loan loss guarantee. I would love to say that this has been a fantastic solution, but it has not been. When we are talking about the increased numbers in slaughter capacity, let us be honest. The numbers are coming from the big packers. We have known for the last 10 years at least that the farmers' margins have been decreasing because of the increasing power of the packers. They are more powerful now than they were at the beginning of this crisis. If we are talking about ramping up capacity, where is the vast majority of this ramp-up? It is coming from the big packers.
We have been talking with the Beef Initiative Group from Alberta. It is trying to set up a plant. It has been waiting and trying to meet with the minister about a feasibility study to move forward. There is a lot of frustration. It seems to me it is the same frustration we see whenever rural Canada tries to meet with the government on issues to move forward. The government makes it sound as though it is moving heaven and earth, but out in farm country things are dragging on.
We have seen this with the CFIA in terms of its plant inspections and attempts of farm producer operations to get new plants. The CFIA continually pushes the plans back and changes things.
The Beef Initiative Group is trying to get a feasibility study agreed to by the government. It is beginning to wonder about the continual foot dragging. I would like the minister to make a commitment tonight that this feasibility study will go forward.
Unfortunately, I am beginning to think that the real problem is that the government has been flying by the seat of its pants and hoping for the best. A good example is that we are now three weeks away from the end of the fiscal year and the government still has not been able to address the issue of the CAIS deposit.
I know the minister will jump up and say that an answer will be coming very soon, but we are three weeks away from the end of the fiscal year and now we are scrambling to see whether or not producers are going to be told they have to come up with this coming year's CAIS deposit. There is $640 million in farmers' equity sitting in the CAIS deposit accounts. That is $640 million that had to be taken out in bank loans with the hope and prayer that CAIS would deliver.
We are going to hear lots of numbers about how CAIS is delivered here and CAIS is delivered there and CAIS is delivered everywhere, but the fact of the matter is when we talk to farm families it has not given them the money they need at the farm gate. Meanwhile $640 million in their own money is sitting in government accounts and we cannot even get a commitment from the government whether that money is going to be returned to the farmers.
The big issue is the government wants to insist that these men and women and farm families across Canada are somehow actively engaged in risk management. After surviving two years of the worst agricultural crisis in Canadian history, I would say these people are actively engaged in risk management, to the detriment of their own health and the future equity of their children.
We have come here once more to see what is the plan for rural Canada. Unfortunately we have seen the plan for rural Canada. It is laid out in the budget, and there is nothing there. The best we are going to get from the government is another quick fix. The best we are going to get is some kind of contingency support. That is not a long term repositioning of the industry. That is the problem with the government.