Madam Chair, I must say that there is one thing I am delighted with tonight. However, I will immediately reassure my colleagues, it is not the contents of the minister's speech. I am delighted because, for once, the minister will have to give me an answer. For quite some time, actually several months, I have been asking him questions in the House about Quebec agriculture and the Minister of State (Agriculture) has been answering for him. I would say to the minister that, in all honesty, Quebec farmers feel that they have been abandoned by the real Minister of Agriculture. This evening, he will have no choice but to give me an answer.
When I stated that I was not delighted with his speech, it is because once again he made an optimistic speech in which he attempted to sell us his policies and vision for agriculture. This is the government approach to most issues: it packages them and attempts to sell them with some marketing. We know that they use negative advertising to attack their opponents. We know that they also use marketing to try to sell their policies.
That is exactly what happened before the budget. The minister will no doubt recall that he made a public announcement before the budget. I did not think that was allowed, but many ministers made announcements concerning their respective portfolios before the budget, completely divulging the contents of the budget and its various aspects. This minster also did the same thing with the program they had the nerve to call AgriFlex.
For some time now, the provinces have been asking for greater flexibility in the programs. Quebec did, as did the Union des producteurs agricoles, of course, and so did all of Canada. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, and particularly the grain producers of Quebec and Ontario, were asking for this kind of program.
The minister managed to make the front page of certain agricultural newspapers, announcing that there would be a new program, the AgriFlex program. However, as I always say—and as I told journalists after we all saw the budget and of course noticed the major shortfalls in that announcement—the devil is in the details. There were no income security support measures. It was not at all what all the farmers were expecting. What they wanted was a real, flexible program to meet the needs of the provinces.
First of all, can the minister explain to me why his program has been reduced from $500 million over four years, as promised, to $500 million over five years? How is that only $190 million in new money was injected into the program? So the rest will come from the department. Is the minister going to make cuts somewhere? I would like to know, and our farmers would also like to know. Where will he cut in order to find the money needed, that is, the $310 million that is lacking?
Can the minister also tell me why he did not include farm income support? How could he have possibly believed that that would be accepted? Once the marketing is done and something is passed off as “new and improved”, once people buy the product, see what it really is and taste it, in my opinion, whoever produced it could face some problems, because the consumer is not going to be happy. That is exactly what happened with this. Those are my questions for the minister at this time.