Madam Speaker, in 1952, my late grandfather came to Canada. He travelled through Quebec and ended up in southern Ontario. Then, almost by accident, he bought our family farm. As family legend has it, he used his Harley-Davidson motorcycle as a deposit on our family farm. Within 48 hours of buying the farm, he was in the field harvesting a crop of wheat.
I say that because now, 65 years later, that family farm is still in our family. My parents still actually run and farm that land. A mile and a quarter north of our family farm is my in-laws' farm. It is a century farm. For over 100 years, their family has farmed that land and passed the farm down through the generations.
I share this because our family and our farm families are not that much different from other farmers and farm families in Perth—Wellington and across Canada. They work hard. They raise their families. They give back to the community. They are the bedrock of the community and the economy in our rural communities. To them, and to our farm families, the farm is more than a business. It is a way of life, but it is also a legacy that survives them. It goes on through the generations.
Unfortunately, some of the tax changes in the proposed legislation from the Liberal government would make it harder and harder for a farm family to pass that farm on to the next generation, for a daughter or son to buy into the corporation, to buy into the farm family, and to preserve that legacy for generations to come.
It is telling that the consultations proposed by the government were only for 75 days. These consultations took place at the height of summer, when farmers and farm families were busy. I know that today alone, many of the farmers in my riding are concerned about harvesting soybeans. They are combining. Yesterday, for example, my own father was combining soybeans at my father-in-law's farm. My wife took our two kids out to the farm to go on a combine ride with grandpa. It is a way of life. It is important to the community. However, here we are with a sham of consultations being done when farmers, farm families, and small businesses were busy.
As members know, Perth—Wellington has a strong agricultural community, but it also has a strong tourist and cultural sector, which of course is much busier during the summer. Many of the small businesses in Stratford and Drayton were busy working hard running their businesses, because summer is when the tourist season happens. The opportunity to provide feedback and to examine a number of these changes was not possible.
That is why to provide the most opportunity possible for the hard-working businesses and farm families to give feedback, we are asking to extend these consultations, as proposed in the opposition day motion.
I find it interesting as well that we had to wait until today, our third week in the fall sitting, to finally have an opposition day motion. The government House leader decided not to extend the courtesy to the official opposition or to the third party to have an opposition day to debate the important issues that matter to our constituents. Instead, it withheld the opportunity until today, a day after the consultations closed. That is unacceptable to so many Canadians who want to have the opportunity to have some input.
Like so many members of the House on all sides, Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats, I have had hundreds of emails and correspondence and phone calls from so many people who are affected. For me, probably the most powerful and moving email came from a farmer in my riding. She was widowed. She lost her husband in a tragic accident. She wrote this to me, and it really reflects the determination of so many farmers.
She writes, “I was left with four teenage children, 55 cows, and 400 acres. I had decisions to make. I decided, along with my children, to keep the family farm and to continue the legacy in memory of my husband and to be able to keep feeding my family along with providing quality food for the world. I have never been so scared during all the struggles I have been through over the past 10 years as I am today. These new changes will affect me and my business greatly. I will not be able to pay the taxes that may be presented to me each year. My son wishes to take over the operation from me, and this will be highly impossible for him to do and be a successful farmer, pay his bills, along with providing mom the necessary living that I should be entitled to. We do not live high on the hog. We do not own fancy homes and don't drive fancy pickup trucks. We do not take vacations to faraway places. We try to make ends meet and pay our fair share. Please stand up for your local family farmers and all the small businesses and let our voices be heard.”
I am proud to stand and support farmers like Linda who work hard for their families and to preserve the legacy of our farm families in rural Canada. However, under these proposed changes it will be more beneficial for a farm family to sell its farm to a large corporation than to a daughter or a son. It will be more beneficial to sell the farm to McCain's than to a daughter or a son. That is wrong. We on this side of the House recognize the importance of preserving that legacy.
It is not just farmers and farm families but small business owners who employ so many people in our country. A small-business owner from Listowel, Ontario, wrote me. He wrote, “As a business owner, I am the one who wakes up in the middle of the night worrying about the future and planning to make sure that I can continue to employ the great people in my organization. If I am successful and able to save funds with my corporation, I will have to pay extremely high tax rates to take the funds out to use personally, and if my business fails, I'm the only one who will lose everything I have worked hard to accumulate.”
That is reflective of the small-business owners in my riding. They are not tax cheats. They work hard. They are up late at night working in their businesses, trying to preserve them, and trying to keep those jobs. They worry about making payroll. They worry about where that next cheque may come from during downturns in the economy. They take the risk. They take the risk without the pension plans, without the health and dental benefits. They do so because they are in it to create a good business and to provide for their own families and the families of their employees. That is who we, on this side, are fighting for. We are fighting to make sure that their voices are heard. We are fighting so that they have the opportunity to have meaningful input on the tax changes being proposed by the Liberal government.
I think as well of the many families in my community who do not currently have a family doctor. I have heard from many hard-working physicians who have expressed concerns about this. One female doctor in my riding wrote, “I have met with headhunters in the United States. I do not want to leave, but if these changes occur I will have to. These tax changes on doctors are equivalent to a 30% wage cut for a salaried employee.”
In an area where we are already having trouble attracting physicians to rural and small town Ontario, putting these changes in place would make it even more difficult to recruit and attract physicians. It would make it more challenging for those families that are already having trouble finding a family doctor to finally find a family doctor. It will affect patient care. We cannot have that happen. We need to fight for all small businesses across our ridings and across Canada.
I know my time is coming to a close, and I want to finish on one important thought. The Liberal government has a spending problem. The Liberals are eager to latch onto any revenue-generating tool they can find. That is exactly what is happening in this case. They are punishing small businesses. They are punishing farm families. They are punishing those who employ our neighbours and those in our community who drive our local economy. They are punishing local businesses because of their spending problems. It must end.
I am proud to rise and support my constituents. I will be voting yes to this extension, and I hope the Liberal Party will finally un-whip their back benches and allow them to vote in favour as well.