Charlie Angus

[Agriculture, April 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's supply marketing system is the envy of farmers all over the world. Supply management is a fundamental tenet of rural Canada.

Our dairy farmers are not subsidized; they are organized. However, when push comes to shove, would the government stand up to defend the principles of supply management, or would it cut and run in the face of over-subsidized trade competition?

The facts are becoming abundantly clear. The recent WTO ruling on modified milk imports will devastate our dairy industries of cheese and yogourt, yet the government does nothing. We have the tools, article 28. Other countries stand up for their farmers, but the government does nothing.

Do we want to talk about a scandal? Do we want to talk about a breach of public trust? I am looking at a government that is too busy saving its own skin to stand up for rural Canada. Canadian farmers do not have to feed their families on recycled promises from the red book.

I am calling on the government--

[Richard Paré, April 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the New Democratic Party it is a real honour to stand today and pay tribute to Mr. Richard Paré for the service he has given not just to us parliamentarians, but in a way to the people of Canada.

Educated at Laval and Ottawa universities, he has built a reputation as a Canadian leader in library sciences. His staff provide excellent service to parliamentarians of all political stripes, and it should be particularly noted not just their research skills but their ability to turn around complex questions in very short order.

As a new member of Parliament, I have to admit that when I landed here I felt I had landed in some kind of Byzantine labyrinth and that it would take me years and years to find my way through all the obscure traditions and knowledge. Of course as we know, members of Parliament do not have a long learning curve; we have to hit the ground running. His staff and the way that material and information is organized in the House makes it possible for new members and veteran members to come to Parliament prepared on an equal footing. That is very important.

I would also like to pay tribute to the man and his staff who have shown that the fundamental pillars of service are based on dedication to the democratic principle of impartiality and to research and to integrity. We see that throughout the parliamentary system in Canada. We might be a somewhat unruly lot here in the House, but we are backed up by people who set the highest standards on every level.

On behalf of the New Democratic Party, I wish Mr. Paré well in his future endeavours. I would especially like to thank his wife, his three children and his five grandchildren for sharing him with the parliamentarians and by extension, the people of Canada.

[Human Resources and Skills Development, April 12th, 2005]

Transparency, Mr. Speaker? Tell this to the volunteer groups that are being shut out. We have documented a culture of fear, fear of losing contracts, fear of losing out to Liberal friendly organizations. These organizations are working with the poor, the immigrants and the homeless. My God, it is like a cross between Gomery and a Charles Dickens tale.

Will the minister explain why the Liberal government has taken to shaking down widows and orphans in order to do damage control for HRSD policy?

[Human Resources and Skills Development, April 12th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, disturbing questions have arisen as to whether HRSD training dollars are being siphoned out of volunteer organizations and into the hands of Liberal friendly organizations. Each of these contracts are worth a half a million dollars. Further, we have had a steady stream of witnesses coming forward with tales of harassment and intimidation by HRSD bureaucrats if they speak out.

Will the minister explain why front-line volunteer organizations across Canada have learned that it is not the merit of the work they do, it is “who you know in the PMO”?

[Parliament of Canada Act, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise in the House.

The New Democratic Party does support Bill C-30. We want to be on the record that we believe that this is a good motion that has been brought forward. We support the work that has gone on between the parties. The report stage amendment was based on all party discussions and we feel it provides fair remuneration for the caucus, the chairs, the deputy House leaders and the deputy whips.

As a side issue, unfortunately there is nothing for deputy hecklers, but hopefully will bring that in at a later date. That is a joke, for the record.

We support the amendment because we in our party believe that our caucus, chair, deputy House leader and deputy whip perform some very important functions in terms of our parliamentary duties in bringing forward the kind of legislation and issues that need to be addressed in this House. We also recognize the work that the representatives of all parties do in this regard.

We believe this deals with the MP issue of compensation. We supported it at second reading and in committee. We believe that pegging it to the industrial wage index is fair and we support that.

Once again, we are always concerned whenever wage increases or anything to do with remuneration is debated in the House as it tends to be a political football, but at this point it is time that we moved forward. It is fair and we support it.

[Agriculture, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago I met with farm women from India who came to Canada to denounce our government's attempt to overthrow the international moratorium on terminator seed technology. These women are the backbone of third world agriculture. They feed and sustain entire communities based on their ability to save and reuse seeds. They came here with a simple message: that their way of life is under threat thanks to our government's support for the terminator gene.

Terminator is not about improving agriculture. It is a gamble with the very essence of life itself. What kind of nation sets out to kill the productive capacity of its own crops?

The government has been a veritable terminator when it comes to watching the domestic destruction of our rural farm economy. Is it going after the very seeds in the ground and turning our farmers into sharecroppers from Monsanto?

I am calling upon the agriculture minister to stand and come clean with Canadians, to get off the island of Dr. Moreau and to say no to terminator technology.

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question is a valid one.

This extra $17 million was being offered as though it were real money. None of this money that I can see has gone to anybody in terms of building slaughter capacity. This plan has not put any concrete in the ground. We are dealing in a time of crisis when it is very difficult for any plant to go to a bank to obtain funding. We have no clear picture of where this market is going.

There is this loan loss guarantee which the bankers are just learning about now from what we can begin to understand. For the people who are trying to get these plants off the ground it is extremely frustrating. Dangling another $17 million of Monopoly money in front of their faces is only adding insult to injury.

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Did the minister get it?

Farmers back home are going to the banks now. They figure they have to give back their CAIS cheques so they can be part of next year's round. This has been going on for two years. Everybody has talked about the CAIS problems. We have talked about them in committee until we have turned blue in the face. There are three weeks to go and we are still waiting to hear from the provincial ministers. I do not think it is the provincial ministers' fault. I think it is the government that has not wanted to sit down and plan for the long term.

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, far be it from me to make this a political issue. I would simply respond with what the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said the day after the budget was delivered. It said that once again the minister has offered farmers hollow words and no action. End of story.

Of course the minister has to sit down with the provincial governments but here we are again at the last minute. It is less than three weeks away from the next fiscal year and we are being told that the government has not managed to phone all the provincial ministers to see if they will agree to change the CAIS deposit.

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise here tonight and speak to this issue. I am sharing my time with the member for Burnaby--Douglas.

We are here for yet another emergency debate about agriculture. In fact my very first speech in the House was in an emergency debate on agriculture. At that time I made the point that there have been more emergency debates on agriculture than on any other issue that has come before the House in the last eight years. I am beginning to wonder why we continue to have these debates because nothing seems to change.

In light of this latest R-CALF move, we have crossed a political Rubicon here. This is the move we have been waiting for and fearing. We saw this move coming for a long time and now it has arrived. We are going to be bogged down in a long and nasty protectionist battle, just like we have been bogged down in a battle on softwood.

The question tonight is whether we are positioned, as the government says, to rebuild our domestic economy for beef and to move forward with a long term domestic solution for agriculture. The fact of the matter is the answer is no, zero, nothing, because the government has played its hand. The Liberals presented the budget in the House just a few days before the R-CALF decision came down and we got to see what their five year plan for agriculture was. It was a big zero.

I have to say, as I mentioned in a question previously, anyone remotely interested in the cattle issue in Canada could have seen that R-CALF injunction coming. We knew it was coming, yet the government seems to have been caught completely without a plan. It just crossed its fingers and hoped for the best. Anyone remotely interested in the viability of rural Canada could have said that 2005 is expected to be the year of bankruptcies across Canada, because of two years of this crisis coupled with commodity problems right across our sector. Equities have been burned up and farmers cannot hold out any longer.

We have the R-CALF injunction coming down at the same time as a five year plan in a budget that has made no attempt to address the long term issue of agriculture in Canada. If I were a tycoon or a foreign investor, I would probably be dancing on Bay Street right now, but to the rural farm families of Canada the budget has offered them nothing. Here we are coming through the deepest agricultural crisis since the dust bowl and all we are getting from the government is platitudes.

I had hoped that we were moving forward and that the government were serious, but having seen the government's response to this, I am beginning to think that our poor agriculture minister has become the cartoon character, Mr. Magoo, of the BSE crisis. I do not think he or the government would know rural despair if they fell over it, and that is what we are talking about. People are giving up. They were looking to the government for a solution.

When we talk about extras on the loan loss guarantees, that is not good enough. In the face of this crumbling rural economy, the government continues to stall for time. It is crossing its fingers and hoping for the best.

I will give for the record the response of our august finance minister. In today's National Post he summed up his government's response:

We've begun to analyze the exact nature of the government response that's required here.... I think it's still too early to say exactly what the nature of that response must be but it's under active consideration.

If we read the subtitles, that is no plan, no backbone and no desire to do anything to help the farm families across Canada. In fact this has been the same lame bleat that we have heard from the government for the last two years on this crisis, that it is repositioning our industry, that it is restoring a domestic economy, yet there was absolutely nothing in the budget to address the mounting agricultural debt that families are facing.

There was nothing in the budget to encourage young families to take up farming. We see right across rural Canada the rising stress levels of an aging rural population and young people have absolutely no incentive to take up farming.

In my own region in the north we are trying to maintain a healthy northern rural economy. Because all the farmland in southern Ontario is becoming too difficult or too zoned in to farm, my region would be a perfect region in which to expand. The only thing the government came forward with was that it was going to cut the agricultural research station in Kapuskasing. That was its commitment to northern agriculture. Obviously it is not worth the government's time to invest in winter hardy crops that are needed in the north.

Then we fall back on the one thing that was in the budget, the loan loss guarantee. I would love to say that this has been a fantastic solution, but it has not been. When we are talking about the increased numbers in slaughter capacity, let us be honest. The numbers are coming from the big packers. We have known for the last 10 years at least that the farmers' margins have been decreasing because of the increasing power of the packers. They are more powerful now than they were at the beginning of this crisis. If we are talking about ramping up capacity, where is the vast majority of this ramp-up? It is coming from the big packers.

We have been talking with the Beef Initiative Group from Alberta. It is trying to set up a plant. It has been waiting and trying to meet with the minister about a feasibility study to move forward. There is a lot of frustration. It seems to me it is the same frustration we see whenever rural Canada tries to meet with the government on issues to move forward. The government makes it sound as though it is moving heaven and earth, but out in farm country things are dragging on.

We have seen this with the CFIA in terms of its plant inspections and attempts of farm producer operations to get new plants. The CFIA continually pushes the plans back and changes things.

The Beef Initiative Group is trying to get a feasibility study agreed to by the government. It is beginning to wonder about the continual foot dragging. I would like the minister to make a commitment tonight that this feasibility study will go forward.

Unfortunately, I am beginning to think that the real problem is that the government has been flying by the seat of its pants and hoping for the best. A good example is that we are now three weeks away from the end of the fiscal year and the government still has not been able to address the issue of the CAIS deposit.

I know the minister will jump up and say that an answer will be coming very soon, but we are three weeks away from the end of the fiscal year and now we are scrambling to see whether or not producers are going to be told they have to come up with this coming year's CAIS deposit. There is $640 million in farmers' equity sitting in the CAIS deposit accounts. That is $640 million that had to be taken out in bank loans with the hope and prayer that CAIS would deliver.

We are going to hear lots of numbers about how CAIS is delivered here and CAIS is delivered there and CAIS is delivered everywhere, but the fact of the matter is when we talk to farm families it has not given them the money they need at the farm gate. Meanwhile $640 million in their own money is sitting in government accounts and we cannot even get a commitment from the government whether that money is going to be returned to the farmers.

The big issue is the government wants to insist that these men and women and farm families across Canada are somehow actively engaged in risk management. After surviving two years of the worst agricultural crisis in Canadian history, I would say these people are actively engaged in risk management, to the detriment of their own health and the future equity of their children.

We have come here once more to see what is the plan for rural Canada. Unfortunately we have seen the plan for rural Canada. It is laid out in the budget, and there is nothing there. The best we are going to get from the government is another quick fix. The best we are going to get is some kind of contingency support. That is not a long term repositioning of the industry. That is the problem with the government.