Raymond Simard

[Official Languages, May 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, every month that goes by without a new official languages action plan costs minority language communities $18 million. So far, that represents a loss of nearly $27 million that could have been used to fund services that communities really need.

Can the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages tell us why phase two of the action plan has not been launched?

[Vancouver Olympic Games, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, francophone and Acadian communities do not want words from the government on this file. They want action.

Apparently, CBC Radio-Canada turned down an offer from the CTV network to broadcast French coverage of the games outside of Quebec for free to ensure that all francophones across the country would have access to it.

Can the minister responsible for CBC Radio-Canada explain to all francophones living outside of Quebec what she plans to do to protect their interests? Should we expect the same disastrous results we got with the court challenges program and the action plan for official languages?

[Vancouver Olympic Games, May 8th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the CEO of the Vancouver Olympic Games said that he is very worried about the possibility of French-language coverage of the games not being available all across Canada. The French-language broadcasting contract was awarded to private networks TQS and RDS, which are available only on cable to most francophones living outside Quebec. What is more, TQS is now under bankruptcy protection.

When will the minister responsible for the 2010 Olympic Games show some leadership and ensure that all francophones in Canada have access to coverage of the Vancouver games in their own language?

[Saint Boniface, May 5th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the parish of St. Boniface will celebrate its bicentennial in 2018. Its colourful history will be well celebrated, I have no doubt, and we will acknowledge the significant contributions of Louis Riel, the church, voyageurs and, among others, the aboriginal, French, Irish, Scottish and Métis people.

This year, we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Saint Boniface. Festivities have already started with the enthusiastic launch of Célébrations 2008 and last Friday's incredible ball.

The co-chairs of Célébrations 2008, Mariette Mulaire and Normand Gousseau, assure us that this is just the start of festivities and that Manitobans will have the opportunity to celebrate this special anniversary throughout the year. The mayor of Saint Boniface at the time, Joseph Bleau—yes, I did say Jos Bleau—has resurfaced and is helping to recreate the political and cultural life of this beautiful city in 1908.

I congratulate all those volunteering at the many events and I am very proud to recognize the contribution of the City of Saint Boniface to the development of Winnipeg, Manitoba and Canada.

[Human Resources and Social Development, May 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development was asked to update the House on child care spaces in Manitoba. The minister then proceeded to mislead the House on the government's role in a provincial announcement to create 6,500 child care spaces in that province. The fact is that there was absolutely no federal support.

Minister Mackintosh actually said:

Despite this year’s loss of a strong federal commitment to child care, we must now regain momentum.

Will the minister do the right thing and stand up and apologize for misleading the House?

[Canadian Wheat Board, April 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, when asked this week about his attempt to breach the Privacy Act, the Minister of Agriculture gave a ridiculous response. The fact is that he tried to break the law twice by writing letters to the president and CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board asking for the names and addresses of and specific commercial information about individual producers.

Why did the Minister of Agriculture put in a second request to receive personal information after being warned the first time that he would be breaking the law?

[Committees of the House, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, some farms in Manitoba right now are losing $40,000 a week. If we add the country of origin labelling to this, it will be a disaster.

Therefore, of course we should be doing it and we should be doing it now. We should not wait until the U.S. imposes this and all of a sudden we are reacting to it, because then it will be too late. We will have more closures and more businesses will not be starting up again. Once they close, that will be it. We will have lost them forever.

[Committees of the House, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, if the member were to look back at my speech, he would see that what I said on biofuels was that I was very pleased that farmers were finally making a living selling their grains at a reasonable price. I think biofuels could be very advantageous in the future.

What I also said was that when we look at the agriculture industry we cannot look at it piecemeal, We need to look at the whole structure. When we fund biofuel projects it impacts on something else.

We have actually taken agriculture for granted for too many years and I think it will come back and bite us, and I think we are there.

On the second issue, the hon. member is right. We should be looking at examining the whole food chain and who is making what money in the whole chain. This is long overdue, and that is exactly what my speech was about. It was about re-examining the whole agriculture industry from A to Z, which I do not think has been done for a long time. I think we are all guilty of that and the time has come to look at that.

[Committees of the House, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this motion today.

I do not pretend to be an expert on agriculture. I realize there are people on both sides of the House who are either from farming communities or are farmers themselves who probably know a lot more, and my colleague from Malpeque is one of those people. I have seen him in action as he has gone across the country. He has been to Manitoba and has spoken to people to get better informed on what is going on.

This is not a fixed industry. New changes are always happening. I have heard my colleague from Malpeque offer encouraging support to a lot of these producers, which is why I thought it was important for me to be here today and express my opinion.

Even if I am not from a farming community, I do understand the importance of the agricultural sector to Canada. Members would be surprised at how many people call us in the city of Winnipeg telling us that we should be supporting our agricultural producers. I am sure it is the same thing right across western Canada and probably right across the country. It is important for people to hear from urban members of Parliament on these issues and it is important that we debate these issues in the House.

We all have relatives who have tried to eke out a living in the farming industry over the years. My father-in-law, who was a dairy farmer in Manitoba, worked 18-hour days, like most farmers probably. It is not easy work but, if we were to ask farmers, most farmers would tell us that they enjoy every minute of what they do. They have no regrets despite the hardships, the ridiculous hours and all the worries they go through. It is a way of life for them.

If we were to ask farmers the same question today, I am not sure we would get the same answer. Young people can no longer afford to take over the family farm or they simply do not want to go through what their parents have gone through. Should we blame them? They might actually have a point.

Cattle producers suffered through an absolutely brutal time with the BSE crisis in 2003. They were just starting to recover when the Canadian dollar strengthened and feed prices increased and once again they are facing extremely difficult times.

The cattle and pork industries are in crisis and, unfortunately, what the government is doing is too little too late.

Once farmers lose the will to continue to do something they have loved all their lives, what do we do? I think we are at the point where farmers are starting to give up on a livelihood they have enjoyed for centuries. How many farmers do we know who have kept on doing what they are doing because they love it, even though they just barely make a living?

I think farmers feel they deserve better. They are feeding the world and they deserve to be recognized for the contribution they make. They deserve to do better than just eke out a meagre living and hope to survive until the next year. We are in a crisis because farmers and producers have decided they have had enough. There is no doubt that some very serious structural changes need to take place soon.

Pork producers have been coming to us over the last two years begging for our support. They came to the industry committee and spoke to us about what was happening to them on a daily basis. Producers are losing their farms. They are not able to move their product. They cannot pay their bills. They needed help immediately, not in two months, not in three months, not in six months and not in a year. Farmers needed help when they came to us some time ago.

During the prebudget debates, I argued aggressively that once a hog producer lost his farm, he or she would not come back. People cannot go to their bank looking to start over after they have given everything up. It is not that simple. Once we have lost them, they will not come back, which is something the government has forgotten.

I have been told, but it has not been confirmed, that over 50% of the industry in P.E.I. is already gone. Fifty per cent of a very vibrant industry is gone and will not be coming back.

Yesterday I heard a heart-wrenching story about a family I know very well in rural Manitoba. After generations in the hog producing business, the family went out of business. It was not for lack of trying because they were very smart business people, but they did what they had to do to survive.

I ran into one of the owners a couple of months ago who told me that his family had bought a store in Winnipeg in order to move some of their product. Talk about vertical integration. They were trying everything they could to survive. They are not people who are in the store business, but this is the extent to which they had to go to survive. We just heard this week that the business, which was a huge successful business some years ago in a small community in Manitoba, is closing down.

Those people are not beginners. They have been around for a long time. One can just imagine what will happen to any of the new businesses that may have started in this industry. There are hundreds if not thousands of examples like this across the country and they are not coming back.

The government has allowed a whole industry to be devastated because it did not take it seriously when it said that it needed help. I know the Prime Minister does not like to intervene and thinks that everything will fix itself. He says that we should let the market rule. We have seen the results of that flawed ideology in the manufacturing and forestry industries. W are now picking up the pieces of what is left of the forestry industry and anticipating a further hundreds of thousands of job losses in the manufacturing sector.

It is important to see that our grain sector is holding its own after many years of difficult times. Farmers have been selling their grain product at the same price for years. One of the major reasons they are now able to sell their product at a more reasonable price is because of the demand for biofuels. Unfortunately, this same demand is one of the reasons that the input costs of pork and cattle producers are increasing.

The time has come to analyze the whole structure of the agricultural industry. We cannot continue offering piecemeal solutions. As we have seen so clearly in the biofuels situation, they are interrelated. We cannot deal with one without analyzing the impacts on the whole industry. I believe that over the years we have failed to look at the big picture and, in fact, we have not given the agricultural industry the respect that it deserves. We have not recognized it for the contribution that it makes to our society as a whole.

Another reason that this motion is important is because it also impacts on the whole rural infrastructure. When farmers and producers are going out of business, guess what happens to the small grocery store, the garage, the hotel and the truck dealership in our small towns? The farmers are their lifeblood, so, yes, there is a crisis in the agricultural sector, but there is a very real risk that this crisis expands to the total destruction of our rural infrastructure.

How many small businesses have closed down because farmers are not buying their products? How many young people have moved to the larger urban centres for work? How many rural schools are having a difficult time attracting good school teachers because the towns are no longer interesting or dynamic places to live?

A small town in rural Manitoba has a pork producer who hires over 300 people. We never used to have towns that were, basically, one industry towns, but it is happening to some extent. We can just imagine what will happen to this small town if that producer is forced to close down.

I am not sure if the government has realized the extent of this crisis. We have farmers who no longer want to farm. We have pork and cattle producers going out of business on a daily basis. We have a rural infrastructure already very fragile and unstable because its youth are heading to large urban cities. I am not sure they can take much more.

We should be immediately reviewing and analyzing the agricultural industry as a whole and the impacts on the rural infrastructure. We should take farmers seriously when they say that they need assistance. They are some of the most independent business people in the country and, therefore, a cry for help should be taken seriously.

This new program proposed by the government is, for many farmers, including my friends in rural Manitoba, too little too late.

[Women's World Curling Championship, March 31st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, a month ago I stood in the House to congratulate the Jennifer Jones team the day after they clinched the Canadian women's curling championship. Ms. Jones and her foursome hail from the St. Vital Curling Club in the heart of my riding of St. Boniface.

Today, I have the privilege to once again herald their success, but this time as the world curling champions. Jennifer Jones, Cathy Overton-Clapham, Jill Officer and Dawn Askin fought their way through the round-robin and then through two playoff games to defeat the young upstarts from China in the final on Sunday.

The last time that Manitoba won a world championship was in 1984, under Connie Laliberté, another one of my constituents.

The Jones team drew on their international experience and skill to emerge as champions, and Canadians had to be filled with pride and emotion as they watched their team walking up the ice waving their Canadian flags.

I would ask my colleagues in the House to acknowledge these four amazing Manitoba athletes and newly crowned world champions.