Mr. Speaker, I am putting forward this motion under Standing Order 52(2) to adjourn the House for the purpose of discussing an important matter that needs our urgent attention. It has to do with the agricultural crisis.
Have you noticed the tiny shoots emerging from the earth today? Weeds will soon be taking over the fields. Some families are in a crisis situation: they cannot afford to buy seed.
This crisis exists because this Parliament has not taken the necessary steps to prevent it.
Our farmers have done everything possible to shine a glaring light on the real and immediate danger to our food sovereignty that our country now faces. They have made it abundantly clear that if we are so reckless as to allow the family farming industry to go down for lack of seed money, we will forever regret it as a nation.
They have tried to point out that they will miss the very small window when spring planting must occur. It is not as though this can happen in July. If they cannot borrow the money now in order to purchase the seeds to put in the ground, some of these farmers are going to go under and they will not be coming back.
This crisis is not of their making. It is not that they are somehow inefficient or unproductive, far from it. It is because of years of bad trade deals and neglect on the part of successive Conservative and Liberal governments, which have reduced the once proud industry to begging its own country, on its knees, by protesting in front of Parliament Hill.
Farmers are not in a position to wait for the budget. The votes on the budget and the cashflow emanating from it are weeks and maybe months away. While it may be said that a week in politics is a lifetime, it has to be said that in farming a week can mean the difference between a viable farm and a bankruptcy, foreclosure and total ruin for the many more farmers that we cannot afford to lose.
In closing, there is a solution to this. If the government were to give a bankable commitment of sufficient emergency funds, as we have suggested, of $1 billion more than announced previously by the government, the farmers could go to their banks and have a fighting chance to deal with those across the table who are being asked to loan farmers the funds to buy the seeds to produce the food we eat.
This is an emergency. It is urgent. We should attend to it today.