Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour and a privilege to rise on behalf of the great people of southwest and west-central Saskatchewan.
I will start my speech off today by acknowledging that the Saskatchewan Winter Games took place at the same time as the Olympics. I want to give a quick shout-out to all the kids who went up to Meadow Lake and to the Flying Dust First Nation to compete in those games. I say congratulations to those who won medals, but I also want to thank the kids who put in the hard work and tremendous effort to be able to compete in those games, and the parents who took time out of their busy schedules and lives to take their kids up there and spend some time up in the northern part of our province, which is a beautiful part of Saskatchewan. I congratulate all the athletes who competed.
I would also like to mention that I had the opportunity this week to meet with members of Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, or APAS. Its young leaders were out in Ottawa this week. I had the distinct privilege of meeting with them, and I really appreciated the opportunity to hear what they had to say. I can say that the future of agriculture in Saskatchewan and across Canada is in very good hands. They have brilliant minds and are putting in tremendous work. They have a skill set and a talent level that is befitting of what the next generation of agriculture is truly all about, which kind of gets at the basis of the speech I want to give today in regard to the direction the government is going and the way it is treating agriculture.
Over this last break week, I had a couple of meetings in regard to the government's plan to slash funding and lay off workers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research stations all across Canada. Some of that is affecting locations in my riding, as well as other locations in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and other places across Canada. It is really tragic that this is where the Liberals are choosing to make cuts.
The return on investment in agriculture is massive. Agriculture is the largest exporting element of the Canadian economy, particularly the Saskatchewan economy, and it plays such a key role in supporting our small towns, cities, communities and various organizations because of the strength of that industry.
When we look at the tone the government is choosing to set by cutting funding in agriculture, it is really backwards to the direction this country should be going. To take that at another level, we are going through the comprehensive expenditure reviews, and we are seeing department after department come back to the federal government saying that they will be able to lay off and make cuts with no impact to service delivery. However, I would say that the Department of Agriculture is the one department that is going to notice a substantial impact to the services that are being delivered to Canadians and Canadian farmers, but also to producers around the world.
We know that the research that happens in Saskatchewan and across the country not only benefits farmers here. It benefits farmers here first, but we are then able to export what we learn to the rest of the world. One such practice would be zero-till or low-till farming practices, which is something we changed on our farm when I was growing up. I jokingly say that it was something that put me out of a job on my parents' farm, because I used to do a lot of the cultivating and disking that we needed to do at that time. However, what we learned, which was aided by the research stations, was the value of doing continuous cropping to restore nutrients to the soil. It also helped build and maintain topsoil quality and moisture retention. It showed that we did not need to be plowing up our fields nearly as much as we used to. There are jurisdictions around the world that are still using that practice, and they could learn a lot from Canadian agriculture.
A lot of the research in that farming technique happened at the research stations across Canada. It was in partnership with some other regions in North America, but a lot of it was done at the research stations. However, that is just one firm example of some of the benefits we have seen from the research stations. Also, various crop varieties have been developed there, which have been cutting edge for being able to continue to grow crops in one of the most difficult places to grow crops in the world.
The area I represent is smack dab in the middle of what is called the Palliser triangle, which was designated by the explorer as an area unfit for humankind to live in, yet we are able to be the largest exporting area in the world of pulses. We grow a lot of grain, canola, other oilseeds and lots of cereal crops. We basically feed the world from an area that was deemed to be unfit for humans, so it is pretty remarkable what has happened.
However, it is because of the things that have happened at the research stations. They are strategically placed because of the various different soil types that exist in Canada, particularly Saskatchewan. My area is very sandy, very hilly and very rocky. A lot of it probably should have been left as native prairie grass, but it has now been turned into agriculture-producing land for crops. The research stations have been very key to making sure we have the crop varieties and also the right timing as to when we want to grow our crops in order to make sure we can maximize their output value. Things like research into fertilizer usage, pesticide applications and weed control are all done at these research stations, and they are put into the various different soil zones that exist in Saskatchewan and across the country. That is some of the most valuable research that has happened at these research stations.
To be fair, I know the government is trying to save money because it has been blowing the doors off the vault with the amount of money it is spending out there, so I want to show a few areas where the government would be able to save money.
The government was looking, over the next three years, to cut 665 staff and find about 15% in budgetary savings through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Over the next 10 years, it will total roughly $150 million in cuts. We are currently also going through the supplementary phase of the budget, and in the supps we see one line item, alone, that would actually pay to keep the research stations open and staffed. There is $150 million for the modernization of the CBC. That is on top of their almost $2-billion budget, and they now need another $150 million for modernization. It is quite ridiculous how much money the government continues to pump needlessly into the CBC, but it also shows where the government's priorities are and how it has no clue what actually runs the largest exporting portion of the Canadian economy.
On top of that, there is the Liberals' boondoggle of the tree planting plan they had. They were going to plant two billion trees. They spent about $267 million to barely put a dent in that number. Now they have abandoned the plan, and they spent $200 million just to end the two-billion tree program. It was going to be one of the cornerstone environmental commitments of the government, and it basically wasted close to half a billion dollars on that entire program. Back in the eighties, Saskatchewan farmers had a tree planting program. They would have planted as many or more trees than that program did, and they would have done it for a fraction of the cost.
When we look at the debt charges, for example, just the debt charges alone are over $1,300 per Canadian per year as of last year, and that is in total $53.7 billion more than all revenue collected through GST. We know there are other areas where the government can find savings. It spent between $17 billion and $19 billion on external consultants, because it basically admitted that even though it has massively bloated the public service, its employees are not even able to do the work that they were supposedly hired to do in the first place.
There are many places that the government would have been able to find savings. We know through the comprehensive expenditure reviews that there are many departments that can find savings without impacting service delivery, but we know that the research that is happening at these research stations is invaluable. It cannot be replaced, and the fact that the government wants to do away with that is absolutely shameful.
I have met with a lot of the producer groups over the last week. They have two very simple requests right now. If the government is not going to back away from these cuts, at the very least they are asking if the government can at least let the 2026 crop year and research year be completed before any of these cuts are rolled out and also if it could slow down the pace at which it is looking to sell off the equipment that the research stations have. There are very specific and very specialized pieces of machinery at those research stations. If there is any chance we could save the research stations, that equipment needs to be there. The producers' request would be that the government would back off on selling that equipment at this point in time.
I look forward to questions from the government.