Madam Speaker, it is a privilege for me to stand on behalf of the residents of Yellowhead on this particular piece of legislation before us, Bill C-40.
I will say right off the top that I am not necessarily opposing this piece of legislation, but I do want to lay before the House some concerns I have as a representative of the people of Yellowhead.
Actually this issue is a little closer to my heart than many in this House, because agriculture has been my profession for as long as I have been in the workplace. My family and I started with a dairy farm and milked close to 100 cows. I had a very modern dairy operation and was very proud of raising my two boys in that situation.
I took very close note of the comments of some of the other members who said that people who pass on an agricultural industry to their children could be charged with child abuse. That is a standard joke, but it is actually a very sobering thought. When one understands what actually is happening with regard to agriculture in communities and ridings like mine, one becomes sober at the thought of what is actually happening down on the farm.
We sold the dairy operation in 1996 and moved on to a beef operation as well as grains and oilseeds. We farm up to 3,000 acres, which is one of the larger farms in the area, and we are very proud of it. It is a wonderful profession. It is one of those professions where one goes to work in the morning, very early, I might add, and does not really worry about what time it is. In fact, quite often we will miss meals and not be too concerned about what hour of the day it is because our whole motivation is not so much about what time we get home in the evening. Our whole motivation is what we can get accomplished during that day.
It is an exciting profession from that aspect. Because of that, a lot of people are drawn to it. If one can be drawn to it and still make a good living, that is a tremendous success, but I want to lay before the House some of the pressures people are facing so that members can understand.
I would like members to realize that in my riding of Yellowhead, in our area of Alberta, we have had a significant number of years of drought. We have had two years of very significant drought and one year of unbelievable pest problems with grasshoppers. They ate absolutely everything that did grow in the midst of the drought. That was devastation.
As has been referred to in other speeches, there was the problem with lack of feed, but there was Hay West and how farmer to farmer actually rallied in this country and sent hay into my riding and ridings around my area to provide some relief. One has to understand that the Hay West project was not necessarily started by a government in power at all; it was initiated farmer to farmer. Farmers understand the pressures and they wanted to help out where they could. That is something that every profession and industry in this country could learn from.
Something else we should also take note of, because it has been mentioned by many of my colleagues, is that the Liberal government has failed farmers. It has failed to understand the pressures and failed to understand that it has to support agriculture.
Before I get into that, I want to explain for members that after the drought and the grasshoppers, we had the BSE issue. The beef industry is a significant part of the primary agriculture of my riding. I cannot explain how dramatically this has impacted my area. I can say that there have been many, many calls to my office from individuals who are beside themselves, who do not know what to do. Some are suicidal. My staff can tell horror stories from over the last couple of years. Some of the calls they received were unbelievably intense. That gives members a perspective of how we are coming at this piece of legislation and the stress that is on it.
Why should the government even protect farming? I think that is a fair question in this House and I believe it is one that our colleagues on the other side have wrestled with, because budget after budget, if one reads between the lines and understands exactly the lack of support that has come forward for agriculture, one gets the sense that the government has no intention of supporting agriculture and would prefer that farmers were out of the industry.
It is unbelievable it would think that way. When we look at the actual number of spinoff jobs that are created for every primary job in agriculture, it is one to seven. It is much different than the oil patch or in the lumber industry, where it is one and four. In small communities or in rural areas where communities grow and thrive on the strength of agriculture, it has immense repercussions to them and the livelihoods of the people who live there.
When bills like this come forward, we get into this whole idea of “Why should we support agriculture?” It is because of that impact. It is also because it is very important as a sovereign nation that we can feed ourselves and continue to do that long into the future.
A lot of Canadians say that we have such a small population compared to our land mass and that they do not believe we will ever go hungry. Therein lies a bit of a problem.
In Europe, it is a little different. Europeans have gone hungry. They support their agriculture to the tune of 75% or more in subsidization.
The United States does it as well. In fact, in the years ahead, if we look at the amount of money the Americans will put into agriculture, they will eclipse the subsidization in Europe. They understand that to be a sovereign nation they must have secure, safe food for their society.
Unfortunately, in Canada the government does not believe that this will be problem. It is a problem. It is something that we have realize, if we lose our agriculture and our agricultural sector.
I have always said that our farmers should be subsidized because they have subsidized low food costs for many years. Farmers do not appreciate going to a mailbox and getting a cheque from a government. That is not the intent. I do not know a farmer who wants to do that. However, farmers want fair value for their product.
This brings me to the legislation, If as a country, we are not prepared to at least support some of the rules so they are fair, so farmers have a fighting chance when it comes to some of the trade issues and fairer value for product, then we have failed them miserably and we have failed society as a whole because of the repercussions of it.
International trade is a major issue. We have talked about the Wheat Board. Many have spoken about its inability to be flexible with regard to allowing farmers to trade internationally on their own, only in western Canada, not in all of Canada.
We have had many repercussions of international trade, particularly with the United States. It has a population of 300 million. We have 30 million. It is 10 times larger. We have a tremendous amount of resources with regard to agriculture that we would like to trade into a market that large. We can compete very easily on a fair and level playing field, and we have a free trade agreement. However, when a neighbour to the south becomes aggressive, whether it is with softwood lumber or with the BSE, which has yet to be proven that it has do with science or health, it is all about politics and bad politics at that, there is a negative repercussion on the agriculture industry and that has some tremendous impacts.
With regard to the legislation we have to ask, why did we not appeal the decision made by the WTO panel? The United States has appealed any decision that went against it. However, when it comes to our side of it, we have been very slack and lax in doing that.
That sends another message to our people down on the farm that we are not prepared to stand behind them and to work for them in an industry with which they are have a tremendous amount of problems and stress. I do not believe that is where Canadians want us to be. Most Canadians want us to look after the farming industry. They have a sense and an understanding that it is an occupation that is worth supporting and worth looking after.
I had the opportunity to be in Taiwan about three weeks ago. We used to trade a tremendous amount of beef with Taiwan before the mad cow issue. In fact, it was about $4 million a month and could progress to about $8 million a month. When I was there, Taiwan had just announced it would open the border to United States beef as of April 16. We argued that if it were to open the border to United States beef, then it would have to come up with a very good reason why not to open it up to Canadian beef.
Not only is our protocol on beef with regard to health and safety better, which the people of Taiwan were somewhat concerned about and that was the reason they had shut the border, but it is a better quality and a better price.Those were three good reasons to open it up and we pressed upon them to do that. I believe that will happen. It is important not just to Taiwan, but it will send a message to all the Pacific Rim countries that it will have major repercussions as far as an agricultural community.
Why do we need that? We have to depend on more countries than just the United States as trading partners. If we are to have a thriving agricultural community and a community that has to compete internationally, then we have to do these things.
Where have we been in the last decade? Not only has the government been trying to shut agriculture down in the country, but it has been retarding farmers from pushing for international trade in other countries. That has been a tremendous failure of the government, and it is unfortunate. Understanding the agriculture community really starts with knowing a bit about it and knowing where people are hurting, then discerning how we can help to create other markets and support the industry.
Diversification on the farm was the call of the age about a decade ago. We knew that to survive in agriculture we needed to diversify. Canada has beef herds, grains and oilseeds and an elk industry, which is another industry that has been badly hurt by international trade.
The elk industry has gone through the BSE crisis just as our cattle industry went through it. The big problem is the government does not understand the impact of chronic wasting disease on the elk industry. However, chronic wasting disease has been looked after and we have not had a case in three or four years. We have to aggressively pursue international markets to get that industry back on its feet.
Our agricultural industry was impacted by mad cow disease through no science whatsoever. What was amazing was when a Liberal member of Parliament went to the association a week ago and said that he knew absolutely nothing about the problems in the elk industry. That amazes me because he is a member of Parliament who sits on the other side of the House, but comes from my province. An article appeared in the Western Producer last week about this.
I get frustrated when I see members of Parliament make decisions on issues that they do not clearly understand and that have major repercussions, especially on an industry that is fragile and in such dire straights. I know how fragile it is because the farm development company, which is a federal banking organization, phoned me at my office and told me that if the border did not open on March 7, many farmers in my riding would be in serious trouble. They would be unable to support their loans throughout the summer. Not only can they not get capital, but they cannot get any support from the government or a government agency which is supposed to be in the business of supporting them.
In defence, I am sure my colleagues on the other side would say that they have been putting billions of dollars into agriculture over the last couple of years. We have to work in conjunction with farmers. A systemic problem has happened, not only over the last couple of years with mad cow disease, but it is a philosophy that has gone on with the Liberal government over the last decade. While it has been in power, it has destroyed the agriculture industry by not promoting it in the way it needs to be promoted or supporting it in the way it needs to be supported on both the international side as well as on the domestic side.
We have seen a shrinking number of farmers right across the country. Small family farms are no longer able to support their livelihoods. They are being forced to sell out to larger ones. The larger corporations are taking over and that is a sobering thought. We should be asking ourselves if that is the direction in which we need to go. Is that a positive direction for Canada as a society, or is it something where we should put measures in to have some checks and balances?
We have to take a serious look at what is in the best interests of Canada and what is in the best interests of the taxpayers of this country, because we are all taxpayers. Some governments will say that the farmers are always asking for more and more money. As I said earlier, I do not believe any farmer wants subsidies. What farmers really want is fair market value for their products. They want a government that will support them in achieving that in the most aggressive ways it can.
Pieces of legislation like this one and rulings from the WTO have got to be dealt with. We will support the bill reluctantly in the sense that it should have been done much more aggressively. We look forward to some of the amendments that we will be able to capture as the bill goes into the committee process. Hopefully coming out of committee we will be able to support the bill in a much more fulsome way.
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.