Madam Chair, there is a sense of urgency here. The government's record on agriculture is poor. According to Statistics Canada, in 1993 net farm incomes were 18% lower than they were for 2004. That is on an inflation adjusted basis. Last year was one of the best years that the agricultural sector had in the last five or six years in this country.
The government's record on agriculture has been poor. However, supply management has been the one bright light in agriculture. I support supply management. We have 500 dairy farmers in Wellington County. As a matter of fact, I went to the Wellington County dairy producers' annual general meeting a number of months ago. I listened to the concerns they had and the investments they were making in their industry.
I support supply management because supply management works. We do not have billion dollar bailouts of this industry. There have not been any disruptive trade shocks domestically or internationally. It provides stable incomes and allows the hard-working family farms, hard-working dairy producers and poultry producers to make a decent living. That is very important.
There are three pillars to supply management. Supply management is like a three-legged stool. There are production quotas, pricing controls and import controls. Those are the three elements that are important to supply management. Those are the three legs to the three-legged stool. If one of the three legs gets knocked out, the stool falls over.
What is happening is that the government is undermining one of the three legs on the stool. It is slowly selling out supply management by selling out one of the three pillars, over quota tariffs, or in other words, import controls. I would be surprised if one of the fathers, so to speak, of supply management, Eugene Whelan, who would have sat opposite me in this House, would approve of what the government is doing by selling out one of the three pillars.
Why is the government, why is the minister, why is the international trade minister trading away at the WTO one of the three pillars, one of the three legs, in supply management? In doing so, it is going to destroy supply management.
Why is the government slowly trading away the pillar of import controls or over quota tariffs for supply management?