Mr. Speaker, the government has a duty to demonstrate that it is prepared to assist our struggling farm community and to date it has refused to do so.
Let me make two points in the beginning. One, the income of Canadian farmers is crucial in sustaining Canadian food sovereignty, and two, Canadians want truth in labelling of food on grocery store shelves.
I raised a number of questions related to the crisis facing our hog and beef producers and the crisis the government is intent upon inflicting upon our western Canadian grain farmers through its illegitimate efforts to undermine the Wheat Board.
As I stated in my question on January 31:
The minister talks about programs, raising expectations, but never delivers real cash.
The response I received then from the minister was:
I advise the member for Malpeque to hang onto his chair, quit sitting on his hands and support the budget when it comes up and more cash flow for Canadian farmers.
Now we know that statement by the minister was a falsehood, because there was no cash flow in the budget for farmers. There was no new money, with one small exception, and that is the $50 million cull sow program which is designed to get farmers out of business.
In fact, the action by Bill C-44 to allow the December 19 money to flow to farmers came about as a result of Liberal suggestions released at a press conference in Charlottetown about 10 days before the announcement by the government. Those suggestions were also tabled in this House in the emergency debate on the livestock crisis. However, the government failed to implement all of our suggestions.
I heard the parliamentary secretary heckle, but I would say to him to live and learn and go back to the emergency debate and look at the recommendations put forward by myself with the strong support and efforts of Cindy Duncan McMillan. Those suggestions are there. The government has picked a couple of them and with our assistance the government managed to get them through the House last Monday so that farmers could gain some money. The government is still failing to deal with the crisis.
The minister told this House on January 31:
We delivered more for Canadian farmers in the last short term than the Liberal government did over 13 years, $4.5 billion and climbing.
The parliamentary secretary repeated those statements on February 13.
The minister has obviously not read his own department's farm income forecast report of February 8, which states in part that program payments reached a “record level of $4.9 billion in 2005”. To refresh the minister's memory, the government of the day in 2005 was Liberal.
The report from Agriculture Canada contained some additional information which Canadians should be made aware of, considering the minister has used program spending as the criteria of success. In aggregate program payments for 2008 in Canada, they are expected to fall by 6% to $3.8 billion.
The translation of that for the members opposite is that the Conservative government, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, has effectively reduced agriculture program spending by $1.1 billion. It is time they acted.