Mr. Speaker, I thank the members across the way and my colleagues here as well; I appreciate that.
I also just want to give a quick shout-out to the Saskatchewan Roughriders for winning the Grey Cup championship. Obviously, it is a long season with lots of games. It is a gruelling schedule, but they are the ones who came out on top through hard work and great teamwork, so I congratulate the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
I was asking a question of the government about China's tariffs on Canadian canola and on our pulse crops. I also had a follow-up question another time around what is happening with India putting tariffs on us. It is specifically our yellow pea crops they are putting tariffs on now. China has 100% tariffs on that particular crop; India now has a 30% tariff on that crop as well.
I just wanted to work through some of the numbers here. I was reading an article in The Western Producer, and when we look at the cash price for peas, it has dropped by about $15 to $20 per tonne since the announcement of the tariffs by India.
Let us just look at some of the numbers. In week 12 of the crop year, the exports for peas were 55,500 tonnes. If we do the math on that, at $15 a tonne, that works out to $825,000 that Canadian farmers, particularly Saskatchewan farmers, lost in that price. If it is $20 a tonne, that goes all the way up to $1.1 million for just one week. That is the kind of loss that farmers are dealing with in the tariffs from India.
Given the total exports in one year, for this year, so far, it is 817,400 tonnes. Let us do the math on that. At $20 a tonne, that would be $16.3 million that farmers are losing out on. At $15 a tonne, that is $12.2 million that they are losing out on because of the tariffs that have been put on by India. I will let the government do the math on what that means for the impact of the tariffs from China.
The Prime Minister said he was the man for a crisis; so far, when we have seen the Prime Minister leave Canada and go out on trips to talk to other countries about trade, we are seeing worse deals or we are seeing no deals happen. He said he met with folks from China, and they said maybe in the new year they will get to dealing with that. Farmers do not have the luxury of time that the Prime Minister is operating on; they need a deal to be done and dealt with now. Harvest is over. The crop is in the bins. Time is not on farmers' side.
I just gave a brief example of the impact on cash flow it is having for Canadian farmers. If the government continues to sit and wait on this, there is going to be further devastation for farmers. We will see that price continue to go down.
We see the agriculture minister not taking it seriously. The Prime Minister has been ineffective in trying to get better deals or even trying to fix the problems that have been created around the world by other governments.
We know that these tariffs are in relation to other things the government has been doing. The Prime Minister needs to put his best foot forward. He needs to get these tariffs removed from China now. He needs to go to India or have somebody go to India and tell them why they need to be taking the tariffs off, so Canadian farmers and exporters can have access to that market once again. Let them know this is the best crop in the world; Saskatchewan farmers do it the best. The government should be working for farmers, not against them.