Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to our party's motion of no confidence in the Conservative government and build on the substantive evidence. Other speakers before me have put forward why the House should show no confidence in the government and, especially, in the Prime Minister.
Simply put, it is a government Canadians cannot trust and cannot believe. It has actually squandered our nation's potential away. The biggest cost of the government's incompetence will fall on our children and grandchildren, not only by the increased debt that the government has laid on their backs but also by the decreased social and economic programs that lead to our children and grandchildren's potential, such as research and development, early learning and child care, education, and the list goes on.
As the member for Wascana said earlier, the current Conservative government has squandered the surplus of the previous Liberal government that Canadians worked so hard to attain. It moved Canada from being best of the G8 to the bottom of the G7. However, instead of admitting to their failure, the Conservatives use taxpayers' money to advertise. Their basic purpose is to mislead and confuse.
As our leader has said, they have spent six times more promoting their own inaction plan than on warning of the dangers of H1N1.
Let me give the House one small example out of the thousands of examples of waste by the government.
I have here a picture and I know I cannot use a prop, but this is a picture of a sign that was put up in front of the Jean Canfield Building and it talks about Canada's action plan using stimulus to create jobs.
The member for Charlottetown announced that building in 2004 and the member for Kings—Hants was the minister of public works at the time. It was built before the current government came to power.
Why would the Conservatives put a sign like that there? As our the leader said, they are “using public funds to promote untruths”. That is what the current government is all about: using public funds to promote untruths.
President Obama, in an August 5 email that he sent out when he was taking on the Republicans over the health care issue, said, and I quote because I believe it is the same problem in Canada:
So we've got to get out there, fight lies with truth and set the record straight.
That is what we have to do in Canada. Because the government over there is using false promotion, trying to confuse the Canadian public, trying to leave the impression that it is doing something when it is really doing the very opposite, and it is tearing down the social and economic structure that Canadians have spent their lives fighting for. It is driving this country into deficit. That is why we can no longer support the government.
Nowhere is the government's record of failure worse and nowhere is the hurt deeper than in rural Canada. Rural Canada is where the great economic potential of this nation lies: in agriculture, in fisheries, in forestry, in mining, and in energy. Those industries are the generators of wealth. However, most are being undermined and left to drift on their own because of the government's inaction.
Forestry was sold out in an agreement with the United States. It still pains forestry workers and plants are still closing to this day. In fisheries, while the east coast lobster fisheries faced disastrous prices, the minister promised help, in March. However, to this date, not a dime has been spent in that help for fisheries. Again, it is lost hope and lost dreams, announcements, and nothing delivered.
The Fraser River fisheries is facing a disaster. Instead of the Prime Minister listening to one of his own, the member from Delta--Richmond East who knows the fisheries, the Prime Minister fired him from the fisheries committee, and now, we are losing the salmon industry in the Fraser River.
Why did he fire him? Because the member was asking for government involvement that would have helped the industry. This is a Prime Minister that is in charge of governing but does not believe in government. That is why the member for Delta--Richmond East is not on that committee.
One of the government's worst record is in the area of agriculture. Remember the Prime Minister's promise in 2006 on cost of production for the farm community? Farm debt has soared to four times that of United States farms and we have lost an average of 3,600 farmers per year. How many dollars were spent under that cost of production program? The answer is zero.
In fact, in the last budget the cost of production program was dropped. What does that tell us? It tells us that the Prime Minister broke his word, not for the first time and probably not for the last.
What about hog producers who are facing the worst financial crisis ever in Canadian history? We have a Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food who announced a few things in the spring, but during the worst crisis ever to hit our industry, he decided to give one press release on top of another and thought that this would do the trick. No, it did not.
The scheme he came up with at the end is almost like a Ponzi scheme, which ensures that farmers can borrow money from a bank that is guaranteed by the government. However, the first condition is that farmers must pay back the government for the unsecured money they received from the government the year before.
Really, what is happening is farmers are now obligated to the banks and they pay off Treasury Board. The minister from Manitoba sitting here, where hog production is the highest in the country, should be ashamed of himself. The minister's department is getting paid while producers acquire more debt. How can farmers in this country have any confidence in a government like that?
What about the beef industry? The minister announced in the spring he was going to challenge country of origin labelling. October 9 is an important date. If the consultations are not completed by October 9, then the investigation cannot get started and that means the investigation will not get started until well into 2010.
What are the consequences to the beef industry without action? The result is this. Our closest market is the United States. Hog exports are down 50%. Slaughter cattle exports are down 20%. Feeder cattle exports are down 50%.
As a farmer in my province told me, five years ago he was getting an average of $1,500 for an animal that went to slaughter. What is he getting in 2009? He is getting an average of $1,106. How can farmers survive that? Who can have confidence in the actions of the government and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food?
Let us look at AgriFlex, which the party over there committed itself to during the last election. Liberals did as well, but we would have kept our word. All the Conservatives did with AgriFlex was put less money in over more time and did not allow the flexibility to do what farmers wanted it to do. In fact, the applications have now come out.
I believe it is designed to be a slush fund for the minister. Maybe the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food has learned from the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities that he could use a slush fund catered to people who support him and to Conservative ridings. However, that has nothing to do with the economic crisis in the farm community.
Then there is AgriStability. Conservatives promised in 2006 that they would get rid of that awful CAIS program, that they would cancel it. They changed the name and replaced it with AgriStability. The only problem is that last year they changed how the calculations would be done and the cheques are now rolling out. They are 60% of what CAIS would have paid. How can people have confidence in the government? The fact of the matter is they cannot.
In Prince Edward Island, producers were promised by the government $12.4 million for weather-damaged crops. However, that money did not come out until it finally got delivered a year later. It was promised at the height of an election. As a result, a number of farmers did not get their crop in this spring. Worse yet, the government promised $6 million for the Atlantic beef plant for all of Atlantic Canada, and that money has not been delivered yet.
How can Canadians, how can farmers, have faith in a government like that? I say vote no confidence in the government.