Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues in the Bloc and the NDP for giving me this spot. As I sat and listened to the speech of my colleague from Wetaskiwin, I felt that as a farmer I wanted to fair. I felt it was another opposition member who probably should speak. I did not know that I was in line. But thanks to their kindness, they gave me my spot back.
There was a lot of truth in what we heard from the hon. member of the NDP. When I got into my office this morning the first thing I was told was that there were four PSAC strikers in my constituency office in Portage La Prairie. I dreaded the thought of talking to these people because I had always been given the impression by certain factions that they were probably very harsh and probably very unreasonable. The way government members explained it is that they could not deal with these people because they were asking far too much. I found exactly the opposite.
We talked on the phone with these people for about half an hour. I asked them what they wanted me to do. I said that a large percentage of my constituents were farmers. I also said that I have a lot of PSAC workers in the department of defence and in the prisons. I asked which side I was supposed to represent. I said that I knew the farmers were in dire straits and that they have to have cash flow to put in their crop this spring. I also said that I knew they had not had an increase for six years. He said “Mr. Hoeppner, you are wrong. We have not had an increase for eight years”.
When I see people who have waited for eight years to get a wage increase from this government, and I see this government that has in the last year and half given a 10% increase to the other place, followed by another 6% increase in wages, I know that something is wrong. That is simply negligence. I would call it even worse than that, and maybe say words that I should not use in the House, when an ordinary person who puts bread on their table cannot get an increase in eight years. We know what the cost of living has been. We know how taxes have increased in eight years. How are these people supposed to live?
I said to these people that I wanted them to support me in this back to work legislation, but I would make very sure that this government would get fire under its rear end so that it finally recognizes that their members are not the only ones who want an increase. The ordinary blue collar workers also want an increase. They deserve it and they have to have it.
How much does this government care about farmers? How much does it care about the ordinary individual? A prime example is what we experienced last year. The Ontario farmers voted 92% in favour of a voluntary wheat board so they could market some of their grain for a better price. What did this government do? It, along with the Ontario government, legislated against it. It listened to the manufacturers who said that if the farmers could sell their grain into the U.S. they may have to pay a higher price because they would not have the product.
There is a very simple solution to this issue of striking dock workers or railway men. Give farmers the choice to market their grain. They will take it across the border where there is no problem in moving that grain. They will probably have to pay a few cents a bushel extra for freight, but they will have a cash flow.
I want to read some statistics which show why I am so determined that this problem could be easily resolved. Morris Dorosh writes in the Financial Post :
Export shipments of the grains (wheat and barley) over which the Wheat Board has a legislated monopoly so far in the 1998-99 crop year are down 41% from the year-ago rate, and down 30% from the five-year average.
Do not tell me that these few days of rotating strikes have decreased that kind of movement of grain.
He further states that exports of non-durum wheat are down 44%, that durum is only down 18% because of the pasta plants in North Dakota, and that barley is down 64%.
He goes on to say:
Exports of leading Western Canadian crops that the Wheat Board does not handle are up 39%. Canola exports are 63% higher than a year ago and a record for the period. Flax export shipments of half a million tonnes are 13% higher than a year ago and the highest to this date in at last 15 years. Exports of Canadian oats are an all-time record for the first 31 weeks...
There is a problem, but it is not the workers at the ports. The problem is with the management and with the selling of these products. Management does not have to be accountable or efficient. They just have to sit and watch things go on as usual, while drawing high salaries, which has been the fact in the past.
This gentleman says:
So what happened to those advantages of the export monopoly? Where is the power and the glory of single-desk selling now? If this is orderly marketing, give me chaos.
That is exactly how the farmers feel.
It is not the workers at the ports. We have seen that with all the non-board grains. It is not that the railways are ineffective in moving this stuff. It is the monopoly that controls the management of these sales.
I would say that is negligence by a government when we have a decrease of 600 million to 700 million bushels of board grains that are being shipped when there is an increase in population in the world of at least 80 million. No one can tell me that these people are eating that much less food that they do not need these bread wheats or grains.
Reform opposed back to work legislation five years ago and suggested that we should have the final offer selection agreement. Today the unions are telling me they are tired of striking. They are tired of using the defenceless farmers as a lever. They do not want to do that. They are human and know that people have to live. However, they feel that is the only lever they seem to be able to use to make government react.
These people have been in a legal strike position for 90 days. As we heard my hon. colleague from Wetaskiwin say, some of the agreements are not finished yet and they were ordered back to work a year and a half ago or two years ago. This is not the way to run a country. This is what a heavy-handed government delivers when it will not listen or react to what needs to be done.
The PSAC workers, and I hope the facts they gave me are correct, were telling me that their gross paycheque was $24,000 a year. How many people today can have a decent livelihood with $24,000 a year? They still have to pay taxes on that. They still have to feed their families. They still have to clothe their children. It is ridiculous. It is a crime. That is the way I call it.
This is what farmers are fighting for. They want a decent return. They do not care about becoming millionaires. They want a decent return for their product, and they are willing to share. We can see that with the food grains bank. No matter how tough it is, farmers donate thousands of tonnes to the Canadian food grains bank. They see suffering and they want to help.
After talking to the PSAC workers this morning for half an hour or so I really felt sorry for them. They are in a position where they have very little clout and they have to use the food line to force government to a settlement. That should never happen in a democracy. That should never be the fact in the House of Commons, but it is.
If we do not change the system to give fairness, to give the opportunity to provide for families, we will some day experience what we are seeing in Kosovo and those areas today. Eventually people will revolt where they are kept handicapped or where they are imprisoned with government legislation that does not give them opportunities other people have.
How much has this country lost because of these strikes? I can bet my farm on that and I am not that big a gambler. If farmers got back all the money that was lost by them on work stoppages, they could probably all retire right now and have a nice bank account.
The worst of that situation is that the money they lost did not stay in this country. The money they lost went to foreign shipping companies and for demurrage. The money they lost went to pay penalties for non-deliverance of the grain they shipped. The money they lost in grain sales is foreign dollars that should have come into this economy. It is not just the losses that the farmers have been asked to bear, it is the whole economy that has lost these dollars.
When we look at statistics and some of the big private analysts telling us that every dollar that agriculture makes has a multiplier effect of $5 or $6 to the economy, we have a bit of an idea of what it could have done for this country. It could probably have provided for all our social costs. But no, we will not listen. We will not take the bull by the horns, as we say on the farm, and wrestle the critter down.
This critter that has allowed these types of work stoppages is not due only to the Liberal government. Work stoppages went on the whole nine years of the Conservative regime. This is a grave disease that nobody seems to be able to cure. What will it take for this country to realize this? What will it take for the government to realize this? Opposition parties realize it and have blasted the government for the last five or six years that I have been here.
Government members do not know how to listen. I do not know whether they all need hearing aids or what they need to finally listen to some good input from this side of the House. To me it sounds like they have silencers that we use on heavy machinery over their ears. The problem with that is if there is a problem with the machine and there is some kind of bearing squealing, they cannot hear it. There are 100 and some bearings squealing over here but that machine out there cannot hear it. They will let the whole thing break down before they will fix it. Then they will blame us and ask why we did not pull those lousy earmuffs off their ears so they could hear.
We are not allowed to do that in the House. We are supposed to be very gentle but sometimes I feel like walking over to the other side and screaming “there's a problem, are you listening?” People are not working. They cannot get a paycheque. Farmers cannot ship their grain. There is a problem.
