Madam Speaker, it is certainly a pleasure to stand today and split my time with my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs.
I am pleased to speak today in support of this act before us to provide for the continuation and resumption of rail service operations.
Let us look at this dispute from the perspective of Canadian farmers across our great country. Whenever the government intervenes in a labour dispute, and we have seen flights of fantasy from the other side in this argument today, the members on the opposite side will always accuse us of acting too hastily. There were a number of things offered to the management and union, such as another 120 days of arbitration and months leading us up to this point, which was all to no avail. However, when I hear the rhetoric coming from the members opposite, there are no answers to the hard questions.
I ask the Liberal member for Wascana this. How long should farmers wait? Should we wait until the hard-won gains that our country has made in digging out from the economic downturn are lost?
I ask the NDP member for Winnipeg Centre this. Should we wait until the canola piles up across the Prairies?
I ask the NDP agricultural critic from Quebec this. Should we wait until our red meat buyers around the world change suppliers?
I ask the NDP member for Welland this. Should we wait until Canada's world-class brand as a top quality food supplier is ruined?
Last, I ask the Liberal member for Guelph this. Does he think we should wait until farmers' delivery contracts are broken and we are facing punitive action?
The answers are loud and clear. Canadian farmers will not wait any longer for a resolution. Canadians want decisive action. That is what we are doing here today. They want Parliament to do what is necessary for the overall good of the Canadian economy. Canadian farmers and processors did not cause this dispute, but they are the ones who will ultimately pay the price. They will pay because of the economic repercussions of CP Rail grinding to a halt. They will pay not just in terms of financial costs, but also what it does to Canada's reputation as a trading nation. We are talking about an industry that last year accounted for over $44 billion of our exports and one in eight jobs in our country.
Canada's world-class grain industry is a powerful engine of our economy, bringing $16 billion back to the farm gate. Canadian grain farmers are well into their marketing plans for this year's crop. They have orders to fill around the world and are heavily dependent on the railways to move that product to market. They have just incurred huge costs for seed, fertilizer, fuel and other inputs needed to put a crop in the ground and those bills will be due soon. They count on delivering their grain at this time of year to build cashflow. Across Canada many producers and processors export up to 85% of their production.
I cannot overstate the urgency of resolving this labour stoppage for the hard-working men and women who put food on our tables and tables around the world. We all know our rail-based logistics system is complex. It involves a range of stakeholders from the railways themselves to shippers, terminal operators, transloaders, ports, shipping lines and trucks, all part of a global supply chain. In this global supply chain that is so interconnected, any glitch or work stoppage affects the whole system. For a trading nation such as Canada, it is key that all players in the supply chain provide efficient and effective service to strengthen our economic performance.
Farmers are asking us to act and to act now. The Canola Council of Canada wrote to the government to express its concern. It said, “As an industry that depends heavily on rail transport for both exports and domestic processing, any work stoppage will have a crippling effect on canola farmers, processors, crushers and exporters served exclusively by CPR”.
This is another quote, this time from the Grain Growers of Canada, which said, “No grain shipments means no grain sales means no cash back into farmers' pockets states”.
The CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board said, “We rely completely on two railways, CN and CP, to move this grain to port from the Prairies, and there are no alternative shipping methods”.
Ian White added that there was $50 million worth of grain sitting in elevators on the Prairies instead of moving to the ports, including Vancouver where six boats were waiting. He said that grain shipments on another eight were on their way in.
Norm Hall, president of the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, said, “We cannot truck our grain to export positions...We don’t have the trucks available, we don’t have the highway system available...so we've only got railroads”.
The Minister of Labour took the appropriate action to assist the parties in an attempt to reach a negotiated settlement. She worked with the parties toward this negotiated settlement.
Our government believes in the principles of free collective bargaining. We have offered all of the resources of the federal mediation and conciliation service to CP Rail and the union.
We firmly believe that negotiated agreements are still the best possible outcome. Unfortunately, the elements needed to make that happen are nowhere in sight and the clock is ticking for our farmers.
Our farmers cannot control the weather, but this is one risk we can help them to manage. Our farmers cannot access new markets if they cannot get their product to existing markets. The sheer size of our land mass means that Canadian farmers depend on rail service more than in many other countries. With strong prices and demand for our farmers' world-class products, the last thing they need is a rail disruption. Today's global marketplace is just too competitive for our farmers to run the risk of not getting their product to market and losing those good quality customers.
I call on all members of the House to support this motion and to support this bill. Specifically, I call on the member for Wascana to stop playing politics with rail. He howls about a rail review to help farmers. Here is a real chance for him to help farmers, and he goes silent. That is shameful.
They supported back-to-work legislation for CN in 2007. I wonder what has changed today.
Canadians can be proud they have a government that is making sure our economy is not jeopardized by risky union tactics. Sadly, we also have an opposition that will never understand agriculture, given that it recently attacked the red meat sector and recklessly claimed that processors would use roadkill in their facilities. We all know the opposition will not stop trying to divide Canadians by attacking Canada's responsible resource development.
Hopefully today all opposition members realize the importance of rail for agriculture and for the overall Canadian economy.