Mr. Chair, I welcome you to your new position. I am glad to see you are wearing your Legion pin, sir. It is always a good thing to support veterans and their organizations.
I had a very lovely supper this evening and I want to thank the farmers who produced it. I thank them very much. It was a very healthy and substantial dinner. I greatly appreciate their efforts and their families' efforts in providing the nourishment for members of Parliament to debate their issues in order to make their lives a little better.
This is a take note debate. The first thing I want to note is that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the minister himself are honourable, decent, hard-working family gentlemen. I will provide them with a few notes in order to move this issue forward and get control of that department. I have said for many years that the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food is running amok with the lives of our farmers.
I will provide a little history lesson on what is happening to farmers and businesses, especially small ones, in the province that I come from, Nova Scotia. There was a company called the Dew Drop Gardens, which produced hydroponic tomatoes and cucumbers, and was doing everything it could to cut its costs. The problem was it could not get its products on the supermarket shelves. Why? Because the competition among the supermarkets themselves had shrunk from six to three and then to two major supermarkets in the province of Nova Scotia, Sobeys and Superstore, and that is it. It pains me.
I can assure everyone that agriculture issues are not easy to solve. The minister is going to have a tough row to hoe, as they say in the field, in order to move this file forward. Things such as international competition, domestic concerns dealing with provinces, and weather concerns make it very difficult. He will not solve all the problems. I can assure everyone that we in our party will do everything we can to support the initiatives on a proactive basis.
The government will not solve the crisis unless local small family businesses and producers can get their products on the shelves. It will not solve the farm crisis when a box of cornflakes costs $3.60 and the producer only gets 7¢. It will not solve the problem of the farm crisis unless the farmer gets more than double or triple that amount. If farmers were getting 25¢ for that box of cornflakes, they would not be here.
If we do not solve the problem of domestic market access, corporate control of agribusinesses, delivery and everything else, the next time farmers come here, they will leave their tractors, trailers and combines with the keys in them and a note saying, “They are all yours. We are done. We are finished”.
In 1986 I went to the exposition in B.C. The most popular pavilion was the green and gold grain elevator from Saskatchewan. I visited it twice. It was wonderful. More people, especially the foreigners, visited that grain elevator than anything else at expo, but at the same time, grain elevators were being destroyed and taken down in the prairie provinces. Instead of having a close enough elevator where the farmers could bring their products, they ended up having to truck their products much further distances on very bad roads.
All of these various concerns have caused farmers and their families tremendous problems.
Supply management is extremely vital to this country, but the Conservative Party from 1993 onward was never a big supporter of supply management. In fact, the position of that party has changed over the past few years. By the way, I greatly appreciate that the Conservative Party has done that. Farmers have a right to be nervous when representatives appear before international boards, the WTO and others in order to move this issue forward.
Not only does the government have to defend the interests of supply management, but it has to get the industry minister to also say very clearly that he supports supply management. The government also has to deal with the agribusinesses and get corporate control of the domestic supply of stores and everything else in this country so that our farmers can deliver their products locally and get a fair price.