Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the leader of the socialist party, waxing eloquent of his new deficit spending deal with the Liberal Party. I would like to ask him a specific question about agriculture. That member, before the flip-flop occurred, when the original budget was presented, asked how Conservative members of Parliament could support that budge. He said:
How can the member from Saskatchewan stand and support a budget that gives nothing for farmers when they are living on the edge?...How will that help any of the farmers living on the edge. They are producing food for us and the world virtually for free? In fact, they lose money.
He chastized us for not defeating the budget by voting against it. Then he cuts a deal with the Liberals, the corrupt ad scamming government, and still does nothing for farmers. He sold out his support without a dime in that deal for Saskatchewan's farmers, a group of people who are on the edge, who need some assistance. Why has he left them out in the cold after chastizing us for not defeating the budget? Now he comes in and props it up without doing anything that he said he would do.
He has done nothing to secure an equalization deal for Saskatchewan, a deal that would see billions of dollars remain in Saskatchewan instead of being clawed back from natural resource revenues, money that could be reinvested for farm safety net programs. We know the NDP in Saskatchewan does not fund programs such as CAIS like other provinces do. Its excuse is that it does not have the revenues. The Conservative Party urges the government to have an equalization deal, to get those dollars back to Saskatchewan so they can be put into those agricultural safety nets. There is not a word on this in the new Liberal-NDP coalition budget.
What does the member have to say to farmers in Saskatchewan who he has left in the cold, his betrayal of them by not standing up for them and not trying to negotiate a single new cent for them?