Mr. Speaker, I rose on September 20 on behalf of farmers in northwest British Columbia in an appeal to the Minister of Agriculture to come to their aid immediately after a disastrous summer that had affected many family farms.
This goes back to the spring. Farmers knew very early on that there was a problem, because their crops of hay were not growing. By July, they knew how bad this problem was. In fact, after months of a class-five drought, farmers were in a situation where they were getting as little as 10% of their normal hay harvests. We have seen this across all the western provinces.
I wrote to the former minister of agriculture back in July, appealed to her, raised this issue and asked for immediate help for farmers who were in a crisis. We were losing family farms. We were seeing farmers have to sell off their herds. We did not hear back from the minister.
Then I met with the current Minister of Agriculture on September 19, told him about the situation and asked where the help was. He said that he had not even heard about the crisis and was not aware of any application from British Columbia. Of course, that application had been sitting on his desk for months.
I do not want to hear that help will be coming soon or that the government is working on it. My question for my hon. colleague across the way is this: On what day will farmers in northwest British Columbia finally get the support from the federal government that they deserve?