Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here this evening to address my question to my learned colleague, the parliamentary secretary. It is an opportunity I relish. In my humble opinion, there are many people here who know a lot more than I do, but I appreciate this time to share my thoughts.
I previously asked why the government cut grain tickets in budget 2017. It was a minor line that cut the grain tickets. The tax deferral program was an important tool farmers used to deal with cyclical changes in their income. It is a really important piece.
The government has taken another step toward making life harder for farmers and ranchers. Its proposed tax changes are going to make it impossible economically to sell the farm to a family member. It would cost more to sell the farm to a family member than to a third party. It is going to really kill those family generational farms because of the economics of the selling.
With regard to income sprinkling, farming is often a family business. It is important that farmers pay their adult family members income they have earned. Farmers are going to be subjected to a paperwork nightmare. They will have to prove to Ottawa bureaucrats that their adult family members are performing a reasonable function. That means that they will have to track every minute their family members work and what they did during that time to prove that it was reasonable. That could be running to town for a part when it is needed when something breaks down. It could be the person buying the groceries and the time accounted for when they are making the lunches for the people out doing the harvest. It is going to be a paperwork nightmare.
On passive investment, the government's plan to tax income saved within a private corporation at a higher rate is also going to hurt Canadian farmers. Farm income can vary enormously from year to year. Fluctuations in international prices for beef and grain occur constantly.
Then there is the weather. In the northern Prairies, there can be an early winter, lots of rain, or lots of snow. This year the southern Prairies are very dry. From year to year, it is very hard to predict the crops farmers will get and the return.
Grain farmers operate their business on at least a two-year basis of cost and income. A grain farmer makes a contract with a shipping company to ship the product in one year and often gets paid the next year. Holding passive investments in their corporations is how the family farmers save for leaner years. In the years they do not get paid, they need those savings.
On top of eliminating grain tickets, the government is ripping the safety net out from under the feet of Canadian farmers. These changes will mean that eventually there will be no family business left to farm.
Will the government now commit to reinstating the grain tickets and cancelling the proposed tax reforms so that family business farms in Canada still have a fighting chance?