Madam Speaker, I am privileged to enter this debate on behalf of farmers in our country.
A little known fact is that I grew up on a farm. That is where I learned my love of food. It is also true that the very first dollar I ever earned in my life came from the farm, which they say among young people is significant. They ask, “How did you earn your first dollar?” Well, believe it or not my first dollar was earned by taking over a shed on the farm that my dad said I could have.
We moved to a different place and when we got there, there was this one shed that had nothing but junk in it. It had old wood and old barrels. Among other things, I found a really wonderful antique clock in that shed. That started another love that I have, and that was repairing mechanical clocks. I do that to this day as much as time permits. I still have that clock. It is on the wall in my office at home. I cherish it because of what it represents.
Anyway, I got into the chicken business as a young man. I had to buy the chickens. My dad was interested in not only teaching me a worth ethic but also in making sure that I understood the principles of business. So even though I lived on a farm and the granaries were full of grain, I had to buy the grain from him. He insisted that I keep track of it. Later on when we sold the chickens in the fall, and let people make soup out of them or whatever they did, maybe even Kentucky Fried Chicken, I had to take that money and pay back the debt I had. My father helped me a great deal with that.
At the time, I sort of thought he could have just given me the wheat. However, later on I realized the wisdom that he had in teaching me the principles of business.
I should maybe tell members that in that first year, after looking after all these chickens, my net profit was $6. I will never forget that either. I took them right from the time they were wee, little, itty-bitty guys right out of the hatchery and I looked after them. I will not give the House the graphic details of some of the things that one has to do with little chicks, but sometimes, for example, they get plugged up and one has to unplug them, and I did that. Again, I look back at it now and think that maybe that was part of the preparation of my future life in politics. At any rate, the farm was just an integral part of it.
My father loved farming. He started farming in 1935, when things were really tough in Saskatchewan. There were some really rough years. I remember when I was born, well I do not remember the day I was born, but shortly after, that we were exceptionally poor, but we did not know it because we were so happy. We lived in a wonderful, loving family, with extended family around as well, grandparents and so on. We all stuck together. Even though we did not have money, we had everything else that one would need in life. One of the things that a farm provides is the ability to produce food for the farm family as well. We butchered our own chickens and slaughtered our own animals, and we dressed them right on the farm. We did not have all these fancy abattoirs and all those other things. I remember taking eggs to town and selling them.
My dad told a story. He was part of the credit union movement in Saskatchewan for many years. On his retirement, after serving for many years on various boards with the credit union, he was given some tributes. One of the gentlemen got up and said, “I knew Corny Epp”. My dad's name was Corny, Cornelius actually, but everybody called him Corny, which was his nickname and was not a pejorative term in those years. “I knew Corny Epp when he was an MP”, he said, “Oh, no, he's never been a member of Parliament. I knew him when he was meat peddler”. That is how we made our living. Things were tough, but we just got to work and we did it.
Farmers have been that way throughout the years. They are very innovative. If they cannot buy something they need, they make it. If they cannot fix something that needs fixing because parts are not available or they are too expensive, they improvise. In fact, one of the jokes going around Saskatchewan in those years was that some farmers tied together their machinery with baling wire. They made it work and they survived.
One of the despicable things though that has happened to farmers is that as their costs have gone up dramatically, lo and behold, they have not had the luxury that so many other people in the country have had, and that is the cost of living allowance.
Whether we are talking about members of Parliament or members of other professions, or the profession that I was in, the education profession, we were always contracting and negotiating agreements. We would always put cost of living increases into those agreements. Why? It was because fuel went up and therefore we needed more income, so that we could afford to buy the fuel. Groceries went up, so we needed more money to feed our families. It went on and on like that.
The truth of the matter is that farmers have had just the opposite. It is just amazing, when we think about it, that our agriculture industry in the country is as strong as it is because of the huge challenges that it has had over the last number of years.
I know that the cost of chemicals, pesticides, machinery, fertilizer, and the whole cost of fuel and property taxes, all of these things have gone up dramatically, and yet can the farmer demand a higher price for his product? No, he cannot. He has to take what he can get.
I remember having a number of farmers over the years talk to me, both before I was in politics and since, about the dilemma they face when their costs keep increasing and they land up actually borrowing against their capital equipment. They cannot afford to replace it and decide to make it go one more year. One more year becomes two years, three and four. Finally, they have decrepit old equipment and they do not have enough income to actually replace it. Eventually they get driven out of business. That is not acceptable.
We need to do everything that we possibly can to strengthen the agricultural industry in the country. This Liberal government has done a dreadfully awful job of recognizing the importance of the agricultural industry, and of doing anything proper with it.
It just so happens that our daughter married a farmer in Saskatchewan. When I graduated from university, I moved to Alberta and subsequently that is where our children were born. Then one of our kids goes and moves back to Saskatchewan, and marries a farmer. I thought, well, kid, I wish you well. I hope things go okay.
We went to Regina about a year ago or so. It was the first time that I saw this. Some farmer had rented or bought an old used, probably unusable, 40-foot trailer and painted a big sign on it, and parked it on his field so that visitors from the United States could see it. The sign said, “Welcome to Canada, the country where rapists, murderers and robbers go free, but farmers who sell their own grain go to jail”. Imagine the depth of frustration that illustrates.
I talked to another farmer, also in southern Saskatchewan, who said he was in a real dilemma. This was a number of years back before I was in politics. He owed money to the Farm Credit Corporation. The Farm Credit Corporation, a Government of Canada organization, was telling him to pay. It wanted its money back. He told them he had no cash and that he could not make his payment. However, he said his grain bins were full of durum wheat that the Wheat Board would not sell for him.
That particular farmer told me he had driven across the border to Montana and found an actual pasta plant. Can we believe it, an actual pasta plant? They are not permitted in Canada under the rules. The Liberal government faced that issue in Saskatoon a couple of years ago and with its policies made it impossible to have a home-grown pasta plant right in our own country for added value and a market for our own farmers' grain.
The farmer told me he could have taken his wheat across the border and could have sold it. Instead of getting $4 a bushel that the Wheat Board would offer if it had a quota, he would get $2 now and then hopefully another $2 when the final payments came in. If he took it to Montana, he would get $8 a bushel, cash, right away. The guy would write a cheque when it was delivered.
Under Canadian rules he was not permitted to take it into the United States. He had to sell it to the Wheat Board for $2 a bushel and then buy it back. This has nothing to do with the Americans preventing him from taking it into the United States. The Canadian government told him he could not sell a single kernel of wheat unless it went through the Wheat Board.
One can only imagine the farmer's frustration. One government agency, the Farm Credit Corporation, was telling him, “Pay us some cash”. He had the chance to convert his grain into instant cash but the other government agency, the Canadian Wheat Board, told him he could not do it. What is he going to do? The interest has been piling up. Threats from creditors have increased. He is getting more and more frustrated. I cannot for the life of me understand how a government that uses the word liberal, which means freedom, liberate, can pound a farmer into the ground so hard that he cannot survive.
The government ought to be ashamed of its record over the last 11 years. In the 11 years it has been in power, it is absolutely atrocious that it has not been able to address the agriculture issue with some long term solutions and some innovation that would provide farmers with the ability to market their product at a competitive price. Instead, farmers have to go through the Wheat Board where the lowest price is the law. It is like Zeller's, except Zeller's gives a bit of competition in its business.
I am not against the Wheat Board. Some people love it, and that is fine. I have no problem with that. Anybody who wants to market their grain through the Wheat Board should absolutely have the freedom to do so. I also think that a farmer who has found a market for grain that the Wheat Board is not selling should have the right to sell that grain to the highest bidder, just like every other merchant in this country. Whether I order water for my office or whether I am buying groceries or clothing, no matter what product I buy, I can see what kind of deal different people will give me. I am able to make a decision.
What is doubly offensive is that the Wheat Board only applies to the prairie provinces, which is incredible. I cannot believe the government would allow this to continue over all these years. The government has been crowing about being the party of national unity, but the things it has done in the last five or six years with respect to ad scam has done exactly the opposite. This country has never been so divided and un-unified as it has been because of the policies of the government.
The same thing is true when it comes to treating farmers across the country equally and equitably. The government has rules which apply in one part of the country but do not apply in another part. Obviously that makes competition very difficult.
Bill C-40 deals with some of the problems that farmers have had with marketing their grain, particularly with the WTO. This is another case of the government dithering on an issue which should be dealt with expeditiously. At the last minute the government is trying to push through some legislation which the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement body says must be done by August 1.
All parliamentarians are being backed into a corner. I am one of them and I will accept my responsibility. I will support Bill C-40 because of pragmatic necessity. We cannot afford to invite more WTO trade sanctions against us. The legislation must be implemented. Therefore, I will reluctantly support the bill so that it can get done.
At the same time I must emphasize I am willing to do that only because I expect that when the bill goes to committee, the amendments that will be put forward at committee will be dealt with rationally and decently by all of the people in the committee and also by the Liberal members for a change.
We need to look at this in the long term. We need to look seriously at the whole Canadian Grain Commission. We need to make sure the issues that are always before us are solved.
The amendment, for which we are asking for support as a condition of our supporting the bill receiving second reading and going to committee, would actually say that we want to have a comprehensive review of the Canada Grain Act and all of the organizations mandated by that act, and that the review should be completed within one year. If a Conservative government of the day had any say in it, we would certainly be acting on those recommendations. We would try to bring some long term stability and business balance to the country's agriculture industry.
One of the issues in dispute was with respect to transportation. Rail car allocation and grain transportation is a huge issue. People have no idea of the tonnes and tonnes of grain that come from our farms, particularly in the Prairies.
I grew up in Saskatchewan, the wheat basket of the country, acres and acres of fields of flowing grain. It is a beautiful sight. When we get in there with a swather or a combine and the sickle makes that swishing noise, it is such a thrill. My brother, who farmed for many years, said that there is something very special in knowing that his profession provides food for hundreds of thousands of--