Mr. Chair, I congratulate you on your position.
This year my family will celebrate its 100th year on the family farm. In 1906 my grandfather moved here and cleared a lot of the land. He cleared the brush, the trees and everything else. He worked extremely hard. We are celebrating our 100th anniversary. As hard as he worked to make a go of it, I just do not know whether anyone else in the same position that we are right now would be able to make it after 100 years. One would think that by the fourth or fifth generation the family farm should be able to make it. It is very difficult.
I sold 3,000 bushels of wheat when I was home just before Parliament opened at around $2 a bushel. Last fall was a very wet year and the elevator ended up having to dry some. It was tough. I sold it for around $1.70 or $1.80 a bushel. I am receiving all kinds of calls from farmers who are very frustrated with this and see no light at the end of the tunnel.
The calls that I get are in respect of a CAIS program that is not working. The calls that I get are in respect of a transportation system that is not working. We have bins full of grain and railways that seem very slow in moving the grain.
We had a previous government that built a program that we had high hopes for. I remember standing in the House together with other members and the parliamentary secretary saying that this program would not work. Even some of the people here tonight were defending it as being the answer to the crisis.
I would ask the new member of the Liberal Party across the way, luckily not the government any more, who just spoke and who is from a rural riding in Saskatchewan if he would stand with the Conservative government in a non-partisan way and agree that the CAIS program is not working, we need to split it, we need to have the income stabilization plan, and that he recognizes what was said in the past is correct and that we also need a disaster component? Would he stand with us and support us when it comes before the House?