Madam Speaker, the short answer to the question is that the government is just incapable of getting its head around what is important and what needs to be done now. A phrase has been developed here, since just before Christmas, calling the Prime Minister “Mr. Dithers”, but I would attribute that particular characteristic to the whole government. It seems to push off until the last minute, and sometimes even after it is too late, some of these necessary things that need to be done.
One of the issues the Liberal government has failed to address is the very nature of farm income. Farming is one of those businesses which has so many variables. The business that I was in before I became an MP, as an instructor at a technical institute, gave me a salary. My salary was almost to the penny the same month after month, with the exception, of course, coming after my annual contributions to Canada pension had been paid up. Then my income went up a bit for the last part of the year, but it was very predictable and always the same.
Many other businesses are that way. Historically some of them may go up and down seasonally to some degree, but it is always fairly predictable. However, we have had in this country many years now where farmers have struggled with many variables.
There are some variables over which nobody has any control except the Liberal government, which I think would like to pass a law to control the weather but it cannot be done. There are droughts. There are times of floods. There is too much rain or too little. There are storms. I remember growing up on the farm. There were occasions when a hailstorm would roll through and all of the anticipated income from several fields would disappear in just a matter of minutes. Those are variables that cannot be anticipated.
There are various plant diseases. There are insects. There are, as I said before, increasing costs of chemicals, fertilizers and farm equipment and the cost of operating and repairing that equipment. Those things are beyond the farmer's control. They happen and there they are, but there are some things which will occasionally bring a farmer down to where his income for the year is almost non-existent yet the expenses have still all been there.
If we want to have a long term policy that will give stability to the farmers, we must have some system whereby in good years farmers should be able to put away some of the excess money in those good years without having to pay a bunch of taxes on it. It should be like a really high limit RRSP. They could put their money away and it would carry them through if they were to have a year or two in which their incomes were suppressed.
Besides that, though, there is the much longer term issue and that is the value of the farm product itself. We have allowed this to deteriorate beyond comprehension. The government has done nothing. Today we are talking about the World Trade Organization. When this ruling came down, the Americans immediately appealed the parts that went against the United States. Did this government appeal the items that went against our farmers? No, the Liberals dithered and sat on their hands and twiddled their thumbs and played their violins or whatever they did. They did not do anything. That is of course typical of this government. It dithers and dithers and does not do things promptly.
I do not have all of the answers, but as my colleague has said, we need to sit down with farmers, with producers, with people in the agrifood industry, and we need to seriously talk about how to develop and implement some plans that will increase the stability and the viability of being a farmer.
I think it is sad when I see and talk to young people who would love to go farming. In fact, I have experienced this within my own family. They just love it. There is something special about getting one's hands in the dirt and making food. It is really something special. There are young people who want to farm, but it is virtually and totally untenable now. It just cannot be done.
There is no way that a farmer can pass off the farm to a younger person because there is no money for any kind of retirement, let alone continuing to operate the farm. The farmer is almost always forced to sell. The family farm, which in some cases has been in the family for 100 years, is lost to the family. All of that is because of government policies.