Charlie Angus

[Aboriginal Affairs, April 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I toured the Kashechewan nurses station, which is knee-deep in raw sewage. I met nurses who were scrambling to thumb flights out of Kashechewan because Health Canada had made no provisions for their safety.

I learned today that the Weeneebayko Health Authority is having to lay off staff in the region because of a fuel deficit because Health Canada pays services at 1996 levels for fuel. My God, this is a fourth world condition at Kashechewan.

Will the health minister stand up and say today that there will be adequate funding for health services in the James Bay region?

[Telecommunications, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it took a leaked document from Geneva to tip off Canadians to this government's secret negotiations to strip away Canada's sovereignty in broadcast and telecom services.

The GATS negotiations on telecom and audio visual services run counter to present Canadian broadcast laws, would strip our domestic policies and render any commitments we made at UNESCO meaningless.

The government is sneaking around Geneva trading away Canadian jobs and cultural policy. Let us shine a light and who do we see? We see the hon. trade minister who just happened to be the lead Liberal on the file.

I think it is pretty clear that he did not have to cross very far on the ideological floor to finish off what the Liberals began, which is the selling off of Canadian sovereignty.

The GATS negotiations are not consistent with our UNESCO commitments. Why should Quebec be offered a seat at UNESCO when the Conservatives have already taken away our cultural diversity?

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, the record of the NDP has been very clear on our desire to work with producers to ensure a risk management program that works. I would ask the government to work with and listen to producers and implement the programs they have asked to be brought forward.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I thank the member for her comments. I appreciate her interest in farmers and their families in Quebec and throughout Canada.

Yes, definitely, we need the intervention now. The $500 million that has been talked about is a drop in the bucket. We need $1 billion. That is something that is understood at least. We need that money now. We need the seeds going into the ground before June. That is important. That message needs to be sent to our producers across Canada so they get some confidence when they go to the bank.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I certainly agree that we need allies at the international level. Unfortunately, it seems to me that we have not had allies at the international level, and that has been a major failing.

Some of our farm people who have been at the previous rounds have come back and told us that Canada is alone. When we talk with the negotiators, they say that Canada is alone. Why is Canada alone? Where have our trade negotiators been in terms of building this coalition because we do have common interest? Where is CIDA in terms of working on development by showing supply management as a system that works, supply management run by farmers, not supply management run by some dictatorial regime, something that actually gives grassroots development in these countries.

The problem we have had is that we have not built those alliances and we have suffered for it. We have not been out there marketing our systems that work to other countries. There is still grave misunderstandings about what supply management in Canada is and how we operate it, so I fully agree with the member.

This is the message that our government team going in will need to have. We can build allies, but there has to be a willingness of government to get those allies.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I have heard it all before. Last June we were going to have consensus on fixing CAIS by dropping the deposit. Perhaps it was March. There is always decisions coming down. It seems to me that seeds have to be put into the ground before June.

The government campaigned on a promise that it was going to get rid of CAIS and replace it. It seems to be very simple. The government campaigned that it was going to get rid of child care agreements. It came in and said that it was going to do it and it did not have to talk with the provinces about it.

I would be glad if they had it in June, but the commitment I want to hear from the minister is that within a year there will be a program whether the provinces sign on or not. That is the question. It is really straightforward. Everything else I am hearing really sounds to me like a replay from the 38th Parliament.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I welcome you in your new position.

I always feel like what the great Tommy Douglas said: that there is something about a fight that makes me want to get up in the morning. People here know me as someone who likes to get at it, but I have to say tonight that I really have to move beyond that because I am tired of this debate.

My very first debate in the House was on this crisis, and we have had so many since then. I really do not want to be here two or three months from now replaying the same thing over and over. I have a sense that we all know what the problem is, but the question is, where are we going to go with it?

I can give members an example. I represent the great riding of Timmins—James Bay. We have an amazing agricultural base there. I think it is the promised land. And there is still promise in the promised land. We were talking with farmers the other day about encouraging farmers to come over from Europe and settle because the land is still fairly cheap. We have wheat, sheep and a great dairy and beef industry, and it can be sustainable, but what we are seeing is the problem of farmers who are now slipping under. And these are the most efficient farmers in the world.

I got a call at home on Sunday night; people know I am at home on Sunday nights. A man said, “Mr. Angus, I don't want to bother you because I know you're a busy man”. Of course he could bother me, I said. He said he needed something to help him. He said he did not have enough feed, that he had not made it through the winter. He said, “I can't feed the cattle snowballs any more”. He said, “There's got to be a government program that can get me through just to spring”.

I asked if he had tried CAIS. He said he tried but got nothing out of it. I asked if he got the cattle set-aside. He said he got a little bit from that but it did not get him any feed. I said the only choice would be Farm Credit, but he cannot go to Farm Credit. Nobody is going to give him any more credit.

The story I have is the story that each member who is here tonight has. We know CAIS does not work. We have talked about it a thousand times. We had farmers from across Ontario show up at the Ontario legislature two weeks ago. They surrounded it, like they have done here. They surrounded it for four days. They said they wanted action.

We saw that government down in Toronto stand up during its budget with its government members slapping themselves on the back and telling the whole province what a great job they have done for farmers by telling farmers to go to Ottawa, because Ottawa is their problem. That is not leadership. And here, tonight, we cannot tell our farmers that we have a problem with CAIS because the province of Ontario or the province of Saskatchewan or every other province does not want to help. We have the will if we want it.

I would like to suggest that in the 39th Parliament we do something fundamentally different from what we ever did in the 38th Parliament. I would say that we have unanimous consent: we know that program does not work. I would refer to parliamentary precedent. The great member for Elmwood—Transcona told me about the time the debate was going on about the bill on the firefighters' pension. He stood up and said, “What are we all arguing about? We all agree and we can get unanimous consent”.

I would like to say that we could get unanimous consent tonight such that within a year we are going to have a risk management program that works. If the provinces do not want to come along, we will defy them. We can do that as a Parliament. We can make that commitment to our farmers that we will go through with it. Of course, the minister cannot stand up and say he can deliver it, but what he can say is that they will try to get this into this budget.

If we sent that message, we would send a message that this Parliament is committed to actually doing something about the farm income crisis. Because I really have to say that I do not want everyone here putting out our 10 percenters saying that we stood up and fought for farmers while knowing that nothing changed.

We can do it tonight. I am asking the minister to make that commitment. I am asking each party to work with us. Let us put it aside. Let us get it done. We have a year to get a risk management program that works. We will stand up to the provinces if they do not want to come along, because we know what it is about. We know it is about passing the buck so that no one has to pay the cheque at the end of the day. That is my recommendation for this evening. I am asking for action on it.

I have a few other comments that I would like to make in terms of the overall direction, and we have had some interesting promises. I am concerned about the belief that we can move to a market-driven solution. Our farmers are the most efficient in the world and yet they are failures because we know that there is no such thing in agriculture as an open market. There is no such thing as a fair market and there is no such thing as a free market.

We have to address those fundamental inequities, internationally and domestically, and we have to be realistic about our ability to deal with that. There is no fair or free market when it is controlled by Cargill, Tyson and ADM. When farmers in my region in northern Ontario bring grade one canola down to the crushing plant and it gets dumped by ADM and there is no place else to sell it, that is not a free and open market.

My good friend from Sackville--Eastern Shore pointed out the lack of access for our domestic producers to get into the grocery stores. When we set up a milk co-op and it is successful, we know that it will be shut down because not a single independent grocer or other grocery chain will touch it when it is a local product. We have to address that.

We cannot talk about the market handling the problems at the domestic level because farmers are in a fundamentally unequal relationship. The question is whether there is a desire to deal with the problems of the agricultural crisis because agri-business is making better money now than it has ever made. That has to be confronted at the domestic level.

When we talk about the international problems, we have to be realistic. Again, I am trying to do this in a conciliatory fashion where we can bring change in the 39th Parliament. There is no way we can have a market-driven response when Ontario wheat is sold into Egypt and we cannot sell because as soon as France finds out, it throws a subsidy on its wheat and undercuts us. It is not possible to have a market-driven response when U.S. corn is coming across the border, subsidized at $2 a bushel. We cannot compete and we should not have to compete because it is fundamentally not right.

I have faith that our minister will go to the WTO and represent our interests, but no one should suggest for a second that the E.U. or the United States will drop subsidies on their rural programs. It is not going to happen. That would be the quickest ticket to political oblivion in the United States today. We have to be realistic in facing that.

What is happening with the subsidies is not just damaging us on the domestic market, it is wreaking havoc with the international economy. The economies of developing nations are being put under. Countries like Jamaica are being flooded by the E.U. What is being done to promote the farm economies of the E.U. and the U.S. is fundamentally wrong for anyone who believes that a producer should be able to take their goods to market and sell them. We can say with pride in Canada that we have not gone out to undermine third world agriculture. We have not gone to bury them with a Wal-Mart approach. We have taken our domestic markets and tried to make them work. Because we are successful, we are suffering attacks at the WTO.

I have to suggest to the minister that we need to have an articulated plan B. As much faith as I have in his willingness to go fight for us, the U.S. is not going to play on a level playing field nor is the E.U. Without a level playing field, there is no talk about a international market response. It is not going to happen.

I will leave it at that. I would love to speak for my full 10 minutes and I usually try to squeak out an extra few minutes. I feel tonight that we have had a lot of talk. I ask the minister and I ask for all-party consent to come out of tonight with an agreement that within one year we will bring back to the people of Canada a fully funded risk management program that works and we will tell the provinces that we want them to sign on or they will face the wrath of the farm community of Canada.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I feel as though we are in a strange situation here, because we are all agreed. We are all agreed that agriculture is going down the tubes and that in fact it might already be there. We are all agreed that CAIS does not work and we are all agreed that supply management does, yet we never seem to get anywhere.

Our poor producers went to the Ontario legislature a few weeks ago and asked for help. The Ontario legislature looked at them and said, “We have done our share. Go to the federal legislature”. They showed up here. We cannot send them the message that we would like to help them but the provinces are not stepping up to the plate. It is incumbent upon us as the federal House of this country to come together.

It is fairly straightforward. I think this is one area where we would have all-party unanimity. We need to work together as four parties and say that we have to take action now. We have to take action now in the area of supply management. It is fairly straightforward in regard to what our message is and terms that are negotiated. In terms of a basic floor price, we have to look at that. We have to look at practical things that can be put in place now.

I would like to ask the hon. member why he thinks it is that we are all standing around here, all of us caring passionately about agriculture, and arguing with each other when we just need to do the job.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, over the last 10 years, we have had more emergency night debates on agriculture than on any other subject. I have said before it is like the scene from the movie Groundhog Day. We always end up playing the same scenario. There are a few new actors in this, but we always end up with there will be a meeting three months from now and something will happen, or we are waiting to get CAIS fixed. Meanwhile our farmers are going under.

Patience is not good enough at this point. We have gone beyond the point of patience.

I would like to ask the member this, particularly in light of the recent meeting with the President of the United States where our government announced that he was our best friend. This is great, but best friends do not put their best friends out of business. That is what is happening now with the dumping, particularly in corn and other products. What concrete steps does the member expect the government to take this year, not next year, to stop the dumping which is putting our farmers our of business?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I was impressed with the member's comments about the high cost of developing ignorance in our young people. I would like to point out that every child in the country, if they have special needs or learning disabilities, has the right to the adequate support they need in education, unless, of course, one is a first nation child because under the former federal Liberal government's policy we were not getting the kind of funding that we needed for special education on reserves. People from our region are being moved to non-native schools to get that funding and it seems to be a position that the present Conservative government wants to maintain.

What does the hon. member think about the fact that a large first nation population in the country is not being given adequate funding for special education needs under federal government funding?