Mr. Chair, I want to congratulate you on the appointment to your position. I also want to thank the constituents of Cypress Hills—Grasslands for giving me the privilege of returning once again to the House to represent them.
There is a story of a mountaineer whose name was Yvon Chouinard who was going out with a group of his friends to climb Mount Edith Cavell. They got out on the mountain, set up their tent in front of the big rock face and a storm settled in and they sat in their tents for about a week. Eventually the storm subsided and they were able to go on. After he was done with that climb, he said that it did not pay to look at a great wall for too long.
With agriculture I think we find ourselves up against a great wall but I am thankful that this government is not one that will sit and look at that great wall for too long. This government is prepared to move and to begin to improve the situation for our farmers and producers across Canada.
I am a farmer and am proud of it. I grew up and spent my life on a farm. I live in the farmhouse that my great uncle built in 1918. I will continue to have an interest in our farm. I understand the pressures. I started farming before I was out of high school and farmed through the seventies, eighties and nineties and I understand the pressures that farmers and producers are under.
We find ourselves here again tonight discussing agriculture in a late night debate. I look around and see some familiar faces and some new ones. We have talked time and again about the fact that we did not want to find ourselves back here. I see the former chairman of the agriculture committee nodding his head because he knows that we have had those conversations.
Nobody in the country wants agriculture to be a welfare case but it almost seems to have been the intent of the previous government. We have the opportunity to make substantive structural changes to agriculture that will give it a chance to succeed.
Earlier tonight we heard the Leader of the Opposition say that it was time for our party to take responsibility for agriculture and we are prepared to do that but I think it is important, first, to talk about the state of agriculture that was left by the previous government. It is important that people understand what was not done and from where we have to begin.
I think the state of agriculture looks like an old farm house that has been abandoned out on the prairies with the roof leaking, the windows gone, the doors e hanging off it and the shutters broken. Some have an expectation that it will become a mansion overnight. We need to tell people that it will take us some time to make the changes that will make a substantive difference for farmers. Our job is to make it liveable first and then restore it to its proper place, and our intention is to do that.
Things were in worse shape than we realized. We found that the farm income support program has basically been universally rejected by everyone. The provinces at one point said that they wanted to continue it and now we hear them saying that they do not want it continued either. The main farm income support program that farmers had in the country has been rejected by virtually everyone in the industry.
We had a reorganization of the agriculture department a couple of years ago which was a fairly quiet thing. A lot of people did not realize that it happened. The effects of that are still being felt through the department. Research and development capabilities were stunted by that shift and that is something that people need to understand. I had a chance to spend some time talking to some of our folks who work in that area. As of last week, late March, they still had not received their budgets for this year. Obviously some changes need to be made in order to begin to move ahead. Actually I found that scientists were having to raise their own money to fund their projects.
We talked a little tonight about bilaterals. Nothing has developed in that area. People have talked about the fact that we need to move ahead on that, and we believe we do, but we have had no movement or development by the previous government on that front. It takes a while to get that up and running. We have had about two bilaterals versus about 40 that the United States has signed since the year 2000. It has moved ahead and it has started to take some of our markets. We need to move on those issues.
Biofuels is now a big issue in our country. Everyone is talking about biodiesel and ethanol. We need to have a national fuel standard. We do not even have that. The previous government never did the groundwork to lay down the standard that we needed.
Earlier we heard someone talk about the ethanol expansion program. That was intended to go to farm communities, to rural areas, to small and medium sized projects so that farmers and producers could be involved in that. The previous government rerouted that money to the large companies. The small projects in the small rural areas where producers wanted to be part of those projects were left out of that project. There needs to be some work done on that as well.
We have a huge job ahead of us and we might as well tell folks that right now, but one of the things I want to say is that agriculture is not dead. Those of us who have been in agriculture know that it takes a lot more than what we are facing right now to chase us off the farm and to kill agriculture.
When I was campaigning before the election, I asked people what they were doing on their farms and in their communities that was successful. I want to read for members a few of those things.
I know farmers and producers who are running seed-cleaning plants and who actually told me that last year they had a very good year. I know farmers who are growing specialty crops who are making unique profits on very low acres.
I had people tell me that they have diversified and switched to herbs and spices. Even in dryland Saskatchewan they are growing them and marketing them around the globe. I had people tell me that they decided to try tourism along with farming and they have been able to do that on some real high end levels.
I had people tell me that they have set up hunting camps in Saskatchewan and internationally and those camps have helped them with the farm.
We have manufacturing in our riding, both on the farm and off. We have food processing. A young couple in my riding developed a new lentil pasta. They now have it on the market, are trying to find shelf space for it and are finding success with it.
We have specialty meats. Actually, some people had gone out of producing beef and chicken because they were making money processing that product.
We have organic specialization. We have producer owned co-ops. We have seed growers. We have retail operations that are owned by farmers and producers.
Agriculture is not dead, but we need to be able to give farmers and producers the opportunity to succeed.
I believe that another thing we need to do to give them an opportunity to succeed is to reach a good trade deal at the WTO. We depend seriously on trade, with 80% of our agricultural products exported. Producers desperately need a rules-based international trading system that is fair to them. We want to be able to support free trade and fair trade. The farmers in my part of the world need a good, aggressive free trade agreement if they are going to do well in the future.
We are told that they can gain up to $20 a tonne on their wheat if we can get a good trade agreement. For canola, which is grown in a lot of our areas, they say they can get up to $70 a tonne if we get a good trade agreement. It is important that we have a level international playing field. We need that. Involved in that are the three things we have talked about over the last few years as we have been involved in trade talks. We need to eliminate trade-distorting domestic support. We need to reduce export subsidization. We need to assure real market access to other markets.
In order to give them opportunities, especially the western Canadian farmers, I think we also we need to give them marketing choice. We need to move to a situation where they are able to begin to make choices about marketing their own products, especially grain. Western Canadians need the opportunity to succeed. They need to be able to dream about success. Why not?
I did a study about four years ago. We had 120 specialty crop processing plants in our province. We had 14 flour mills, 12 of them owned by two foreign companies. There are opportunities in specialty crops. There can be in grain as well. This government is committed to the transition of the Canadian Wheat Board and giving farmers the choice on how they market and process their own grain.
We continue to get a strong message from our farmers in a designated area that they want marketing choice. The industry tells us they are ready for a change. Producers are creative and have demonstrated their ability to adapt and succeed. We will stand beside the board as that transition is made to ensure that farmers who support the board will have it as a continuing option for them.
We believe we can work with the board. In fact, we have worked with it to get the initial prices increased. That was announced yesterday. Wheat and feed wheat prices increase by from $13 to $23 a tonne, while durum will increase by $15 to $19, and barley by $10. This change obviously will not solve 13 years of Liberal rule, but it will be a good start.
Obviously we have a lot of problems to deal with. One of the bigger problems is farm income. We have heard a commitment tonight that we are going to deal with that. We are going to deal with that as we promised in the election campaign. We have said we will replace CAIS. We are committed to doing that. We have said that we will implement a new disaster assistance program and we are committing to adding $2.5 billion to farm income over the next five years in order to give farmers the beginning of success in agriculture.
I want to finish with a short illustration. I am reminded of a cartoon, a picture of a little duck, with a ball glove, standing out in the middle of a ball field. The ball gets hit and he waits for the ball to come to him. He is anticipating it and the little bulb over his head says, “Success is when skill meets opportunity”. The ball goes over his head and hits the ground. Then he thinks, “Failure is when fantasy meets reality”.
We have had enough of that. We believe we can do better. We know what needs to be done and we have the ability to do it. We can and will do that so we can achieve success for our agricultural producers across Canada.