Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from the NDP for her question. Her comment is on target.
I was asked by La Terre de Chez Nous, a newspaper distributed in rural communities throughout Quebec, about precisely this measure. I said what the member has said. Can we believe, regardless of what this government announces and intends to do, that it will really deliver the goods?
As I said just now in answer to the question from the member from Malpeque, it is hard to feel any assurance that all of this is going to be put in place the right way and that producers will truly be able to benefit from it. We hope so. That is why I said there are good measures in this bill and we will support it being passed as quickly as possible. We will be very vigilant, however. I would ask all my colleagues in the House to do the same, as things move ahead, to make sure that we do not end up with measures like the ones announced by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food before the budget when he proposed the AgriFlex program.
We all expected that it would be what the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and other farmers across Quebec and Canada had asked for: flexible programs for the provinces. But when we were presented with the budget, we saw that this was not at all what was being asked for. There were no income security support measures, and so it in no way met the expectations of agricultural producers. That is why I always say the devil is in the details, and I also say the government should have held more consultations, even though it says it made every effort and consulted a lot of people. In fact a news release was put out by the president of the Fédération de la relève agricole du Québec stating that he would have liked to be consulted.
How can it be that he was not consulted, given that many of these measures affect young farmers, the farmers of tomorrow? I have found one association in all of Canada that was consulted and that spoke for young farmers. I have a lot of questions about the government’s effectiveness when it comes to holding a genuine consultation. It is all very well to consult the banks, because they are affected by measures like these, but it was really essential to invite people who speak for young farmers.