Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to the amendment that our party is trying to make on a very serious bill. It is important for a number of reasons. When we are talking about this amendment, which is about allowing a scrutiny of the government's actions and being able to examine the impacts of the increase in biofuel production, it is really important for us to look at how we came to this point.
When discussions were first made about biofuels, there was a general air of excitement. There certainly was in farm communities. I represent a farming district. There was the hope that we could find a new market, that we could actually start to bring fields into production. We have many fields that are fallow in our area, and it would be great if we had new markets for our domestic agriculture. There was certainly that component in terms of the agricultural rural perspective.
There was also very much a sense of our party's growing concern about global warming. The government party does not seem to share that concern. The government seems to think it is a direct threat on the expansion of the tar sands project. Most other people in the world would agree that global warming is a serious issue and needs to be addressed, and the best way to address it is actually by diverting us from the oil economy as opposed to simply throwing more subsidies into the Athabasca tar sands project and the political backers of the Conservative Party.
We looked at the issue of green fuels as certainly a way that most people were willing to examine, to support to help foster a new economy to get the biofuels industry off the ground. We are, however, seeing many, many disturbing implications from the success of the biofuels industry, and it certainly is a reason for us to pause and reflect and to examine. It is also incumbent upon us as legislators to make sure that there is ongoing reflection and examination of how this industry is going to continue to develop.
We need those checks and balances. If the New Democratic Party were asked if we should give a blank cheque to the Conservative government to carry on without scrutiny, we would certainly say no. It is not that we are opposed to the further development of biofuels, but we certainly do not trust the government without accountability, without clear checks and balances, without someone leaning over its shoulder to make sure that it is continuing to play by the rules, because we know that the government certainly has had a few problems in playing by the rules recently.
This is where the amendment would come in. The amendment is not to oppose the future development of biofuels, but to say we need some reflection. That would be a perfectly reasonable position.
A couple of serious impacts are beginning to take place in terms of the whole development of biofuels. In our domestic agricultural community, we are certainly seeing some up sides, in terms of increased payouts that are being paid to grain, of course, but there are major implications for our hog sector, for our cattle sector, for anyone looking for feed. There is the international implication and what this means in terms of the global food supply. I am going to focus mainly on that. There is also the question of whether or not this is, as an article in TIME magazine said, basically an energy myth that there is something clean in biofuels as it is presently being pursued. The article actually refers to it as the clean energy scam. We have to be very clear about why we are putting hundreds of millions of dollars into developing an industry that may not actually be helping us environmentally at all and in fact may be hurting us. I would like to speak in terms of those three priorities.
On the first priority, I am seeing in my region a growing concern about the price of feed and inputs. If I ask any of the farmers what they would attribute that to, they will say simply ethanol production. It is very clear. There is clearly the impact and the effect is right there.
Last year our hog producers were paying maybe $90 to $100 for a ton of barley. Now they are paying $140 and it could go up to $200. We are in a situation where 10% of the hog capacity in this country is about to be culled. In fact, even worse, part of the culling program will lead to sterilized empty farms for three years. Anybody who accepts the payout will not be able to hold any hogs for three years. That is a very serious hit to the regional and rural economies of Canada. It is a very serious threat to farm based families that are losing their farms.
Cattle producers tell us they get the same price for cull cattle now as they did in 1986, but in 1986 they were able to fill their diesel tank on the farm and buy feed. What they would get for a cull animal now would not even begin to pay for feed. They are very concerned about the growing cost of feed. With the push to get ethanol based products and corn and other agricultural products, we see the impact on our primary producers, especially anyone who has animal livestock. That is why we need to have ongoing scrutiny to see the implications and effects of this.
When we look at this internationally, the picture becomes much starker. We are seeing international food riots. We hear talk about a growing crisis that will affect perhaps the entire economy of the world. People will go hungry because they cannot afford to pay for basis staples. When we look at any of the economists who speak on this, one of the clear factors they always continue to indicate the fact of increasing production and spending money for fuels rather than to feed people.
This is a very serious issue. It is so serious that it is bringing together traditionally conflicting views. For example, Jeffrey Sachs has accused Canada of ignoring its position as a potential world leader on this issue. I do not know if there has been a time that Jeffrey Sachs and I have ever agreed on an issue, but in terms of this issue, we do.
Where is Canada's leadership? Right now people around the world are going hungry. There are food riots under way. We are in a situation where we are seeing growing instability and we hear nothing in the House, nothing from the government, nothing from Canada as a former international leader on addressing this.
What are the problems? We are talking about global warming. We are talking about the continual move to take food out of food production and move it into fuels. When we do the math, again, we see the bloated North American and European economy living off the sufferings of the third world. TIME magazine pointed out that if we took one SUV and filled it with corn-based ethanol, the amount of corn that went into filling that one tank of gas would feed one person for an entire year. It is clearly a question of efficiency, the fact that we have taken so much valuable food land and moved it out. We seeing the stripping of the Amazon basin now to move into soybean production for fuel economy.
The government wants us to give it a blank cheque, wants us to allow it to continue to expand the biofuels economy and give subsidies to a biofuel plant in this riding and a subsidy to another riding, which ridings are predominantly on the government side—