Madam Speaker, the question I asked the minister was clearly about supply management, primarily in the dairy industry, and the new trade agreement that the government has entered into with the European Union and how we intend to ensure supply managed farmers that indeed we are going to maintain the system we have in place.
There are three pillars that are talked about when it comes to supply management: import controls that help plan production so that the level of imports must be known and the predictability is achieved through tariffs high enough to prevent imports above the agreed level of market access; producer pricing, acting together farmers are empowered to collectively negotiate fair prices for their products and production discipline; and producers plan and adjust their production to match consumer demand.
I raise those three pillars because my experience in the past in collective bargaining is that when we put things on the table, there is a give and take in the bargaining process.
The government may say to not worry about it, but the reality is it is on the table. In negotiations the understanding is that everything is on the table. What we find out is the EU's common agricultural policy is not up for debate. Therefore, everything is not on the table.
When we put something on the table, to get it off there is a price. The other side that bargains never lets us take things off the table that may be of benefit to them unless we pay the price to remove it.
That is why when we have things we want to keep, do not put them on the table. We put things on the table that we want to simply let them have because we no longer have value in them anymore.
The government clearly has said that it values supply management. What we have heard is that it believes in the program, it wants to support the program and yet it placed it on the bargaining table.
If that is the case, then what assurances can the government give supply managed farmers and what guarantees can it give that the government offer on supply management will be taken off the table. How will it come off the table and when will it be removed?
Those are critically important questions for supply managed farmers who, I might add, are one of the few farm groups across the country who are able to sustain themselves because of what they do on the farm.
Too many other farmers across the country, and we are seeing it in the agriculture committee and seeing it on the road talking to young farmers, are not making any money. They are digging themselves a deeper hole, going into more debt to sustain the farm or going off farm for second jobs to keep the farm.
One of the things we all recognize is that we eat. The other thing we also recognize is that the things we buy in the grocery store to feed ourselves come from somewhere else, other than the grocery store. They come from farms and farmers.
We need to ensure that these things are protected. We need to understand that supply management works. This is one area across the entire farm sector of this country that is working for farmers. It is working for consumers as well.
As someone who lives less than 30 minutes from Buffalo, I know that to save 50¢ I am not driving to Buffalo to get milk. Let me say that I will pay 50¢ for four litres of milk more than what is paid in the U.S. to ensure that we have farmers who can sustain themselves, stay on the farm, continue to farm, and provide the quality food that they do for us. They will continue to do that for us into the future because that is what they want to do.
Again, I ask the parliamentary secretary, what guarantees can the government offer that supply management will be taken off the table? How and when will it be removed?