Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today. I will be splitting my time with the Minister of National Revenue. Like most Canadians, I like to share with the minister at least once a year when he assesses my taxes. I am sure he will look at my file a little differently now that I am sharing with him.
I was really thrilled to be appointed by the Prime Minister to this role. It is a dream come true at some times. Other times it is more of a nightmare. There are a lot of thorny issues that percolate around the agricultural sector in our great country, Canada.
This is an agricultural day on the Hill. A lot of groups are around the Hill advocating and lobbying and so on. I started out my day at about 7 o'clock this morning with a breakfast with fertilizer groups from across the country. We talked about their future and the role they play in agriculture. It was a great discussion of issues pertinent to them, and I look forward to my next meeting with them as well.
Later today I will meet with the animal nutrition folks. They are working their way through a lot of the glitches that have arisen with respect to imported animal nutrition products and how we are going to come to grips with free and unfettered trade, but still ensuring that the food supply is safe and secure for our pets as well as people. We working toward that end.
Tonight a lot of us will end up with the CAFTA group that is here. At the same time the Canadian Federation of Agriculture is putting on another function as well. There is never any lack of things going on in the agricultural files.
There are a number of things I have been happy to pick up from my predecessor, now the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, who did a fantastic job on this file. We have a saying in agricultural areas that I am basically harrowing the ground that he ploughed on a lot of these issues. I tried using that logic with a member of the media in Ottawa at one time and the person got it backward. The individual was harrowing before ploughing. Out in the real world we do it in the right order and a lot of it has to do with the environment and taking care of that in our charge.
A number of things in the throne speech have been decried by the Liberals. A lot of that may be alligator tears and a bit of an impression that they never really measured up.
There were a number of Liberal throne speeches. They prorogued a number of times and recessed and did all sorts of funny tricks. Most of their throne speeches ended up in the archives because nothing ever came out of them. I never found any mention of agriculture in any Liberal throne speeches. You have been here longer than I have, Mr. Speaker, and I would challenge you to try to remember back over the years any words of encouragement to the agricultural sector in a Liberal throne speech. I could not find any at all.
Then I started to think that maybe the Liberals put it all into their budgets. Maybe that was when they kept their powder dry in the throne speeches and rather than over promise, they would deliver something in their budgets. I started checking those too and other than a trail of tears leading to the vault from Canadian taxpayers, I could not find mention of agriculture in their budgets either.
There was a lot of neglect on the agricultural file over the 13 years the Liberals were in office. My colleague from Prince Edward Island, who is with us here today, is agreeing with me. He is nodding his head. Farmers on the emerald isle are telling him that as well. I am happy to have that support.
I had a great trip out to Prince Edward Island a couple of weeks ago. The member of the agriculture committee from Prince Edward Island followed me around and re-announced my announcements a day later. That is the greatest form of flattery. He is agreeing with everything we are doing. I am certain we will see a lot of support from the member.
I made a mistake in question period. I should have said the former minister, the agricultural brain child from Prince Edward Island. I want to apologize to the rest of the country for mistakenly calling him the minister. Everybody is going to have a late night trying to get to sleep after that one.
A number of great initiatives have been announced in the throne speech that pertain to agriculture. There is mention about interprovincial trade barriers. We all know the cost and the cause of those types of things as we have these little kingdoms across the country. Some of the provinces, specifically British Columbia and Alberta, have come forward with an agreement called TILMA, which gets rid of that boundary when it comes to agricultural products especially. We hear some discussions are happening between Ontario and Quebec. It is all great news.
We need free and unfettered trade among our provinces the same as we are seeking. My seatmate, the Minister of International Trade, was on his feet today a number of times. He talked about bilateral trade agreements, on which we are working. Those are requirements of a trading nation like our country, whether we get everything we are looking for at the WTO in Geneva this go around or not. We are still going to need bilateral trade agreements to build on that foundation or to take the place of that if a deal does not go through. It is not looking good at this point. There are a lot of different interests at play.
Our main trade negotiator, a fellow named Steve Verheul, has done yeoman service. I have a lot of time for Steve as do most farming operations across the country. He has done a tremendous service for Canadian agriculture in carrying that message and that load to the round tables at Geneva. Steve deserves our respect and certainly a bigger pay cheque than we could ever give him.
He does that job. He is the greatest cheerleader for Saskatchewan agriculture, Ontario agriculture, the Maritimes agriculture and Quebec agriculture. Every form of agriculture in the country is being represented equally and robustly by Mr. Verheul at those tables as we could ever imagine. I just cannot comment enough on the great job he has done.
There are a lot of other things in the throne speech. We reiterate our movement toward free and unfettered trade in the world. We are very close in negotiating some of the trade deals. Some of them we have signed.
I started to check back in history. I wanted to compare our action with what the Liberals did over 13 years and I could not find one action. The member who spoke before me went on and on about what is not in and what is in and how they would do a better job. I guess if we want to compare report cards, that is what the next election will be all about, whenever it comes.
I am happy doing my job. If it comes to pounding campaign signs tomorrow, next spring or next fall or October 2009, when we have actually stipulated the date, I am happy to do that.
However, I am here and I want to govern. I have enjoyed working with my provincial counterparts, teeing off on the great work that the former minister did in Whistler last June, moving forward with “Growing Forward”, getting past that old CAIS program, which even the Liberals have said we should have done earlier. We campaigned and made a promise on that. We are following through on this and we are replacing it.
We are coming forward with user friendly products. They are bankable, they are predictable and they are the best of which we can work.
We have had two rounds of discussions with the farm groups. We are looking forward to a third round. I had a conference call with my provincial counterparts last week. I am looking forward to a face to face meeting in mid-November to carry on with the great work the farm lobby has done in building this new generation of products.
Of course we cannot back stop everything we would like to. There are trade rules that curtail us in certain ways. However, we have been very innovative and appreciative of what the farmers have gone through sector by sector.
Talking about innovation, I came to this job with one concrete principle, having been a former producer. My one and only concrete principle is farmers first. Without a robust farm gate, a vibrant farm gate, none of the rest of my portfolio or a lot of other portfolios make any difference at all.
We are about ensuring that farmers can do what they do best, which is to plant those seeds, raise those livestocks, grow the vineyards, the orchards and so on, which make this great diverse agricultural sector.
I have stayed with that bedrock principle. I have had great discussions with some of the processing sector, which is also facing some anomalies at this point with the dollar rising as quickly as it has and as dramatically as it has. A lot of that speaks to the robust Canadian economy as a whole. Our American counterparts are slipping a little and they are our major trading partners. Some 85% of what we trade goes back and forth across the border on a daily basis.
We are all about free and unfettered trade, but it is easier to get a piece of steak into Montana than it is to get it from Lloydminster into Alberta. That is how crazy that interprovincial trade stuff is.
We are looking at a lot of those issues, working with our provincial counterparts, building a stronger economy around the farm gate. In the statement my parliamentary secretary made today in the House, his S. O. 31, he talked about the contribution of agriculture to the GDP of our great country. The third largest contributor, some 8% of our GDP, comes right out of that farm gate. If we do not stop and think about the great work the men and women in the farm families are doing across the country every time we sit down to a great meal or a great snack, then we are missing the boat.
There has been a disconnect over the years between the gate to plate analogy. I remember years ago being raised on the farm. There was not a Sunday that I can remember that the aunts, uncles and cousins did not come out from Saskatoon or the cities they lived in and enjoyed a great chicken or beef supper, or a trip to the pasture to check on the cows. Of course we had the good old wiener roast down there.
I do not remember ever losing that disconnect. They were all born in farm families, moved to the city to carry on with a career, but they never lost that analogy. They always came back and remembered that foundation, that anchor, which was what Canada was all about.
I have had a tremendous opportunity to look at the future of agriculture. In my mind it is all about science and technology and it is all about innovation.
I made a comment at the biotech summit a couple of weeks ago. I said that when my grandfather was homesteading, his hands were on the plow and he dressed accordingly. Today, the pioneers for agriculture are wearing lab coats. That has dramatically changed over the last 100 years. Over the next 10 years, I think we will see a paradigm shift in agriculture as we start to look at bigger and better things for our farmers and our farm gate.