Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise the chair that I will be sharing my time with the member for Fraser Valley East.
I am pleased to participate today on this long awaited debate on agriculture. It is the first time in the four months of this Parliament's sitting that we have had a government sponsored debate on agriculture. It is good to see that our friends opposite have cranked up their tractors and are heading out to the fields to do some work.
Farmers across our country are busy with their spring work and seeding. New seed is going into the ground. I believe that as farmers drive up and down the fields in their tractors their radios are tuned into the news to see if there are any new ideas and any new initiatives coming forth from Ottawa this spring about farming.
It is time for new ideas and new approaches to agriculture in Canada. Old ideas, like old seed, will not produce the results we need. The basic new idea we need in agriculture is that government must get out of the way of farmers. Farmers do not want government as their major partner in business. They realize the way to solutions for our problems is to open up the process and let farmers take control of their own destiny. Let farmers determine and choose the solutions. Let them get involved directly about how they want to produce, process, insure, transport and sell their crops.
I want to focus my remarks today on new ideas about some safety nets and also touch on the farm debt problem as it relates to the Farm Credit Corporation. There is no question that farming is a high risk business, perhaps more so than any other industry. We face matters over which we have very little control. There are basically three of them: trade distorting influences, market cycles, and good old mother nature.
On this matter of dealing with mother nature there was some discussion by farmers in my riding during the election campaign last fall as to whether the weather was provincial or federal responsibility. It was finally decided it must be federal because it does cross provincial borders.
New ideas are needed as to how to make adjustments in light of the GATT and the NAFTA so that we can take full advantage of new market opportunities.
There have been some gripes about GRIP in my home province of Saskatchewan, so much so we have given notice that we are withdrawing from the program after the 1994 crop year. Why is this? Because farmers right across our province think it is a lousy, useless program. Some of their main concerns are that it has declining support levels, the premiums are too high, there is a lack of producer consultation in developing it and the payment process is too long.
Saskatchewan has the largest number of producers in the program of any province in Canada, some 42,000 when it started in 1993 and an insured acreage of some 23 million acres. Our involvement was almost twice that of any other province, but we are pulling out. For the most highly involved province to do so makes a big statement about the need for the program to be scrapped after only three years of operation.
It is a tremendously highly bureaucratic program. The program works by building on conventional crop insurance by offering producers a form of revenue insurance. Producers are provided with a guaranteed target revenue. Indemnities are paid throughout the crop year and are triggered when the value of an eligible crop falls short of the target revenue. The premiums are shared by federal and provincial governments as well as producers.
In the event that the premium income and accumulated reserves are insufficient to cover indemnity to payments to producers, the federal and provincial governments share the deficit financing. Deficit financing. I do not like to say those two words. Deficits are financed 65 per cent by the federal government and 35 per cent by the provincial government.
Does that sound bureaucratic? I believe it does. Well it is, at least according to most of the farmers I talked to, and the results are predictable. As of March 31, 1993 there were outstanding interest bearing advances of $64 million. The program is in the red.
What are we proposing for this revenue insurance for farmers? Reformers have always believed that GRIP should be discontinued. We believe it inhibits farmers' abilities to compete. It discourages good land stewardship and is market distorting. It promotes producer dependence and is in violation of international trade rules. The implementation of streamlined comprehensive safety nets is a priority for ensuring necessary stability in all sectors of agriculture. This Reform process must be based on trust by providing for direct stakeholder consultation.
I want to touch on some of the problems of farm debt as it relates to the Farm Credit Corporation. The Farm Credit Corporation mandate states that the purpose of the FCC is to enhance rural Canada by providing specialized and personalized financial services to farming operations and to those businesses in rural Canada that are related to farming.
That is a very honourable mandate, but if one goes out into the country and listens to farmers talk about the FCC. one realizes this mandate is not being achieved. Farmers in my riding tell me that when it comes to dealing with this government organization it is much more difficult than dealing with the chartered banks or credit unions. I have heard horror story after horror story of unrelenting badgering by Farm Credit Corporation officials as they give their brand of personal service to farmers.
For example, last week I had a call from a farmer in my riding who had leased back his farm from the Farm Credit Corporation after FCC had taken it away from him. The deadline to pay his lease was May 2. He was in arrears by some $12,500. The Farm Credit Corporation would have been completely justified in taking back the land on May 2. On May 1 he called me and told me he had some private backing available to pay one-third of his arrears on May 2 and the balance by certified cheque on May 31. This sounded completely reasonable to me and a solution to the problem.
He asked me to act on his behalf with the Farm Credit Corporation. After explaining the position to both the case worker and the regional manager, I came away frustrated and very angry. They both told me they were not interested in his proposal and they were only interested in doing business with someone who would pay. It is not that this farmer would not pay; it is that he could not pay.
The bottom line here is that we will lose a 55-year old farmer who has little or no chance of any other career in rural Saskatchewan. Now the corporation has no chance of ever recouping this farmer's back rent. He most likely will end up on social assistance.
These two bureaucrats told me they had to be more fiscally responsible to Farm Credit Corporation. That to me is not very fiscally responsible. We had the chance to save a farmer, if only for the short term, yet we chose to play God with another farm family's life.
These are the kinds of stories I hear on a regular basis in my province. At times I am embarrassed to be part of a government that deals so heavy-handedly with people's lives. If it were within my power a noise would have been heard all across this country last week. That noise would have been the heads rolling in the Farm Credit Corporation in Regina. My question is: Do we as a government have any business in the banking business? I think not.
As I mentioned before farmers want to be able to control their own destiny. All they ask for are fair rules and a level playing field. If we look at government spending on agriculture in the past we see that we have spent adequate dollars. A budget of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2.5 billion is not by any means insignificant. What we need to do is spend smarter, not necessarily more. The government must be prepared to show leadership in developing farm programs by farmers for farmers.
In conclusion, there are not many things a farmer cannot fix if he can get his hands on them. Let us get the farmers in on this discussion this year and let the seeds of common sense that have made our country great bring forth the harvest of an industry that will be second to none in the entire world.
