Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by stating that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member of Parliament for Newton—North Delta.
I am pleased to rise to speak to this motion in the House. It is a motion that many people in my constituency and in my part of the country feel strongly about.
Before I talk about where I come from and how important rail transport and its connection is to both the agricultural industry and the northern economy, I want to comment. There are some moments we have in the House where time and space seem to collide. We swear that what we are hearing we have heard before, and we swear that the problems people are talking about are what people predicted just a short while ago.
Here we are debating an issue that farmers across western Canada said would happen. Despite the rhetoric of the Conservative Party, farmers across western Canada and across the country know their land. They know the reality of their communities and the economy around them better than any of us.
What did farmers across the country tell us when the spotlight was on them as the government ran roughshod over their voices to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board? They told us that they were getting ripped off by rail companies. They told us that they were working hard to produce a product of the highest quality that they could ship around the world, something they continue to do. They told us that they knew from development in communities around them, whether it is southwestern Manitoba, across Saskatchewan, or in Alberta, that oil and gas was ramping up and that rail lines were increasingly being taken up for product that was not theirs. They were facing immense challenges as a result. They were saying that their voices, whether it was on the Canadian Wheat Board, or on any other decision that affects them, needed to be at the centre of the decisions being made.
That is the last thing that the government has done. There are many across the aisle who have spent many years working hard as farmers in the agricultural industry, something that we all respect. However, what I do not understand is that many of those members of Parliament, whether or not they have an agricultural background, stand up and profess to talk about communities in western Canada. What they are not doing is speaking on behalf of the people who are saying they need help and support. Farmers across western Canada have given, as they do every year, everything they have to produce what they need to live, to provide for their families, and to grow their communities. Unfortunately, the player at the table who is letting them down, who has the power to make a difference, is the federal government. It is the very same federal government that is made up of members of Parliament who claim to represent their interests.
I believe there is a map in the Prime Minister's Office and on part of the Prairies there is a lot of blue colouring that says “taken for granted”. There is no debate better than this one to show how the government takes the west for granted. It takes for granted the people who work hard to give back, who have helped build our country through the agricultural sector, given Canada the great name it has in terms of its grain exports, and who simply want a fair deal.
This has a domino effect. I can speak to this as the member of Parliament for Churchill because I know the way Churchill has been impacted by the government's wrong-headed and corporate interest-driven decision to dismantle the single desk Canadian Wheat Board.
Churchill is a community that has a very diverse history, but one of its pillars is the port. This is a port that is a gem for northern Manitoba, for my province, and really for our country. It is the only deep water seaport in northern Canada. As an unfortunate result of climate change, there are some opportunities for increased trade through that port, as it takes longer for the ice to freeze in the fall.
There are many opportunities for investing in this port. We could be looking at how to grow linkages between Churchill, other northern countries, and countries around the world.
One of the staples that has gone through Churchill for decades is grain. The Canadian Wheat Board, as it did for every port, coordinated to the nth degree the kind of traffic that would need to go through Churchill and every other port. It chose Churchill because it was the fastest and cheapest way at that time of year to get to certain countries. It was not cheap so that it could be good for the Canadian Wheat Board; it was to save money for farmers. It was to save them money and save them time in terms of not having to decide where and how they would ship their grain. It looked out for and had the backs of farmers in western Canada. The moment the Conservative government dismantled the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board, it let Canadian wheat and grain farmers down.
In Churchill, we know that the government's ironic decision to subsidize trade that goes through the port has made for a superficial bump in the traffic going through there. This subsidy, as members know, will be over in five years, by 2017. In fact, people in Churchill, and I was just speaking to the mayor a few days ago, are very concerned about what lies ahead for this community and our region.
Churchill, of course, is affected by the fact that the single-desk is gone, but it is also affected fundamentally by the fact that the Conservative government fails time and again to project and realize a vision based on Canadians' interests and the interests of people living in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, whether they are related to the agricultural industry or any other industry.
The domino effect extends to other industries. When rail cars are not available for farmers, they are increasingly not available for other industries. For example, our region also depends on forestry, which is another sector that has suffered deeply under the current government's reign. Most recently, Tolko, a successful forestry company in our region, announced that it would be laying people off temporarily. Why? It is because it cannot ship its product. It has produced far too much, and there are no rail cars to ship it out.
It is not that the product is not in demand. In fact, it is industrial paper that is very much in demand around the world. The company has global exports. It is not because the product is not of high quality. In fact, incredible research and cutting-edge technology have gone into producing it. The reason people are losing their jobs is that they do not have access to enough rail cars.
During this debate I have had a chance to hear great stories from the other side and very positive remarks about the hard-working farmers across our country. I cannot help but think of the people who right now are struggling because they have lost their jobs. They know that what they produce they cannot send elsewhere. They do not know what they are going to be able to save this year. As a result of the Conservative government's inaction, they do not believe that the situation will get better next year.
We are not just sitting here until midnight to talk at each other. We are here to call on the Conservative government to make a difference and to stand up for farmers across western Canada, western Canadians, and communities like Churchill, The Pas and many of the communities the Conservatives represent.
We call on the government to listen to the people across western Canada and to sit at the table to engage rail companies to stop ripping off farmers and western Canadians. We call on the government to make a difference on behalf of a part of the country that deserves to have proper representation.