Mr. Speaker, I can only speculate as to the reasoning. Probably the number one reason is a lack of intimate familiarity with the issues and culture. While there are many good members across the way, they do not quite have the nuanced knowledge that is sometimes helpful when it comes to debates like this.
The other thing I will note is that unfortunately we are probably going to see the number of farmers dropping off as the years go on. That is because the demographics show that farmers are considerably older than the general workplace population.
Starting in roughly the mid-1980s and extending for about 20 years, agriculture prices in prairie commodities were very poor, with the exception of a few open market commodities like canola. That has caused younger farmers, such as I once was, to drop out of the industry, and the age of the agriculture producer to rise dramatically.