Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words about the farm crisis we are facing which is particularly difficult in my home province of Saskatchewan where it has been hitting harder than in any other province in the country.
Farm income in Saskatchewan is down by 70% or 80%. The net farm income for grain farmers, I understand, is down by about $300 and some million. There is really a very severe crisis in the province of Saskatchewan and something has to be done about it in both the short run and in the long run. That is why this debate is very important this evening.
Over the last couple of months I have had a lot of farmers speak to me in my riding. My riding is roughly half of the city of Regina and half outside the city of Regina. I think we have something like 1,500 farm families in the riding.
We received a lot of calls and letters from these people saying that they were in dire straits. Much of what is happening is not the fault of the farmer. Two things have occurred that put the farmer in a very difficult position today. The main thing is the trade and subsidy war that is going on in Europe and the United States.
To give an idea of what I mean, the American farmer is subsidized five times higher than the Canadian farmer. Just this fall the U.S. Congress passed a bill that subsidized farmers in the United States by an additional $6 billion. The total American subsidy for farmers is $22 billion or five times higher than what the subsidies are in this country.
In the European Union wheat farmers are subsidized by a total of $205 per tonne. That is the subsidy in Europe. Against these odds it is no wonder that the price of grain without the subsidy is very low. Indeed it is below the cost of production. For that reason a lot of farmers are suffering.
There is a fellow in my riding from Balcarres named Lloyd Pletz. He has said publicly in the media “I am finished in the spring. I have no way to hang on”. He told a story in a press conference on October 16 organized by me and the member for Palliser. He talked about the farmers in his neighbourhood who were going bankrupt and were broke. They would have to sell their farms and get out of farming come next spring if there is no help on the way. He also talked about farm stress and difficulties in families.
There was another women named Mrs. Elder who operates a farm distress line. She said “My phone has never been ringing as much as it has been ringing this fall with people calling in. There are marriage breakdowns, financial difficulties, stress in the family, sicknesses and so on”.
We have a real crisis that is not of our own making as Canadian people. The question is what do we do about it. There are three things we have to do. One we are already doing. In the short run we need an emergency payout to farmers. I am talking primarily about cereal producers, grain producers and wheat producers but also about hog producers.
That issue is a bit different. Hog prices have fallen drastically mainly because of what has happened in Asia and the loss of that market because of collapse of the Asian currency and the Asian economy. The market is not there. Hopefully that will recover. There are signs that it might be recovering a bit in that part of the world.
We need an emergency payout to farmers to make sure they survive and can plant a crop next spring. We can afford that as country. We cannot afford not to do it as a country.
The Minister of Finance a few weeks ago announced that in the first six months of this year our surplus was running at $10.5 billion. The Minister of Finance should signal very quickly that several hundred million of that will be paid out by springtime to farmers in emergency aid. That will not only keep farmers on the land, which is important, but it will also provide jobs in the Canadian economy and a spin-off for people in the small towns and cities across the country.
Emergency aid of several hundreds of millions of dollars is needed to keep farmers on the land. We are running a surplus of some $10 billion at this time. Maybe it will be $15 billion, $20 billion or $25 billion by the end of the year. We do not know. Surely to goodness we can provide $700 million or $800 million to farmers between now and spring seeding time.
That is my basic plea this evening. We should do that and announce it before Christmas so farmers will know, their bankers will know and the credit unions which finance farm loans will know well ahead of time that a payment is coming. Then farmers will be able to afford to plant their crops in the spring. That is extremely important.
Another thing we need is a long term farm policy, a long term program that is put in place to handle a crisis like this one. I know this is being discussed in the agriculture committee and in other forums around the country. It should be a program based on the cost of production, so that if the cost of production falls radically and drastically as we have seen now there will be an automatic kick-in where the farmer then is supported up to the basic cost of production.
That is what we need in terms of a long term farm program so that there is something there. It would be a bit like the unemployment insurance program used to be for workers, something that was there in a time of crisis, in a time when the man or the woman lost his or her job so that there was something there. We need that too when it comes to agriculture in terms of the long run.
I also want to mention this evening the whole area of the trade wars. I know the government has spoken out on this matter. I know the foreign minister and the minister of agriculture are on their way to Washington tonight and tomorrow. I think we have to take a very aggressive role in the international community, in Washington, at the WTO, in GATT, in Europe and in the Council of Europe in speaking out against these subsidies that are killing the farmers of this country. We have to do that and I know our government is doing that.
Parliament should express itself very clearly from all parties in the House. The ministers should do that as often as they possibly can on behalf of our farmers. That is extremely important.
What is happening today is not the fault of our farmers. It is the fault of the treasuries of Europe and the treasury of Washington that are subsidizing their farmers to such a large degree that our farmers are going down. It is a crisis, unless one has been on the prairies, that might be difficult to visualize. It is the worse crisis facing farmers in my province since the Great Depression of the 1930s. That is without any exaggeration.
This has a tremendous spin-off in terms of the whole economy, the small towns and cities across the country. When farmers are going to lose their jobs or are worse off they do not spend money and everyone is worse off.
Why do we not unite in the House and send a very clear signal to the Minister of Finance and to the Treasury Board that part of the expected surplus this year should be spent before spring on an emergency payment to farmers?
