Charlie Angus

[Canadian Heritage, December 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, will she or will she not? That is the question arts groups across Canada are asking because they are being devastated by the fact that the heritage minister has refused to say whether she will reinstate funding for Tomorrow Starts Today.

Tours are not being booked, programs have been cut, and meanwhile the minister continues to do the dance of a thousand veils, or as she calls it, reallocation exercises.

Will the minister commit to full funding for Tomorrow Starts Today? Could she give us that assurance today?

[Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act, December 7th, 2004]

This was a provincial slaughterhouse, but we are in a major crisis. The fact is we have a regional food economy. Small producers are unable to sell products to other provinces, say Manitoba sausage to Ontario or Quebec cheese to another province. There is continual interference in this area. We are talking about making smart regulations to move massive amounts across the U.S. border. However, within Canada, the CFIA has acted as a stop for a number of areas where we could open up our domestic agricultural trade and people could benefit.

The CFIA backgrounder talks about improved border enforcement tools, the creation of the Canada Border Services Agency and some of the CFIA regulatory powers will be transferred to that.

In light of some of the concerns that we are hearing over the U.S. homeland security act and the continual interference on Canadian sovereignty, we have to raise serious questions about handing over these powers to the United States and the potential of limiting our own CFIA inspectors here.

There are some other serious concerns in terms of our foreign inspection arrangements, that we recognize certificates of inspection issued by inspection providers recognized by the agency. Perhaps I am not reading this properly, and I would not doubt that, but are we talking about the ability of the CFIA to download responsibility to other contractors or to accept U.S. recommendations simply carte blanche? If that is the case, we will have serious questions.

In talking about foreign inspection arrangements on imports, the bill states, “In exercising its responsibility the agency may enter into arrangements with a foreign government, a foreign government agency or a foreign government organization respecting the importation of regulated products into Canada if the agency is satisfied that the legal requirements”, blah, blah, blah.

What we are talking about is streamlining our regulatory processes with the United States. Again, we have set certain standards that Canadians trust. In terms of trying to integrate a North American market, we always know that our standards will be lowered to meet their standards.

In terms of the BSE crisis, I am very concerned about this, because Canadians have pushed for, and we are continuing to push for, very strong cattle policies. We have not seen similar support from the United States on that.

We talk about the issue that food safety should not be negotiable. Yet clause 11, which deals with foreign inspections, says that we will rely on the results of inspections conducted by other agencies, other departments. I think the United States would agree with this, but again, how does the Canadian consumer react to this?

There is one other area I will touch on tonight, because this will be going back to committee and we will be looking at a lot of the aspects. We were given a slide show presentation on paper. We do not get real slide shows any more; we just get the paper. The government members talked about bringing in a complaints mechanism relating to public health and safety. Of course, that sounds like a motherhood issue and we should all support that.

The question I asked at the time, and I have not heard an answer, was what about whistleblower legislation? It should be enshrined for people who bring forth concerns, civil servants such as the Health Canada officials who raised serious concerns about regulatory processes in Canada and it resulted in their being fired. That is shameful. That sets the lowest standard possible. If we are talking about any kind of complaints mechanism, we should be talking about protecting our own civil servants and scientists from Health Canada or from CFIA who come forward with legitimate concerns which may impact upon the health of Canadians.

Before the bill goes any further, I would like to see that kind of language put in very clearly.

[Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act, December 7th, 2004]

If it were Orwell, yes, it would be a piggymoron. I thank the hon. member for interrupting me and taking away some of my valuable time, but the English lesson is well enjoyed.

A poll done recently said that even after the BSE crisis in Canada, some 90% of Canadians still had confidence in our beef supply as opposed to something like 60% to 68% of Americans about their own domestic food supply.

When we talk about bringing into line our regulations with American regulations, there are serious questions we have to ask. We know that across the United States there has been intense pressure from large agricultural business on regulatory policies. There have been a number of times that consumers have fought these issues. In Canada there have been times when we have had to stand up. When we talk about merging our regulatory practices with the United States, we have to once again ask, are we dumbing down our regulations to go for cross border sales? In the long term that will affect consumer confidence and if it affects that confidence, it could affect our domestic markets. I am very concerned about that.

I am particularly concerned that we are looking toward expanding our trade with the U.S., which of course in a North American context is important. However, that kind of trade tends to favour the very large producers. In Canada we have a serious problem in that our smaller producers cannot trade food products interprovincially, thanks to CFIA rules. I and the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue raised in the House the other day the fact that cattle was brought across the Quebec border into northern Ontario, North Bay, to be slaughtered. The CFIA intervened and shut that down, even though we all agreed that there was a huge crisis in cattle. We agreed that the CFIA must work with the provincial organizations, but we had support of the meat inspectors out of the Rouyn area. There was no problem until the CFIA stepped in and said that cattle could not be killed and then send it back.

[Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act, December 7th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise in the House and speak about business that affects the people of Canada, particularly people of rural Canada who produce our food.

I am honoured to speak to Bill C-27 in our first round of discussion. As someone representing agricultural interests, whenever a bill comes forward on agriculture, the first thing I ask is what kind of consultation and input has come from agricultural producers. In fact, that was one of the very first questions I asked at the briefing. At that time, I received a rather vague answer, but I was assured there had been consultations.

I phoned a number of the agricultural organizations that I trust and with which I have worked. None of them were aware really of any of the details about Bill C-27 until it was announced. That disturbed me. I believe the support of our agricultural community is vital for a bill like this to pass.

One thing we can all agree on is that food safety and customer confidence will be the number one agricultural issue in the 21st century. We see how changing consumer tastes on a number of matters can affect our ability to produce and how it can affect our markets. When we talk about food safety, we have to look at the complexity of the issue, and it is a good to talk about the role of the CFIA. The other element that is crucial is consumer confidence.

I have a number of concerns about the bill which could potentially undermine consumer confidence, and that would reflect badly on our role as legislatures.

There are some serious questions we have to ask about our willingness to create a bill such as this. To me, it appears to be a very large omnibus bill. There are a lot of devils in the details, as we always say, and issues that will be dealt with by orders in council. I am very concerned about the kind of sweeping powers we might see. We use the term smart regulations. That is a bit of a buzz phrase. Maybe I am a child of Orwell, but whenever I hear a term like smart regulations, it sounds to me like an oxymoron or perhaps something of which I should be very wary. I tend to take a second glance at these. I am worried that in some cases smart regulation is moving us toward dumbing down our regulations to appease our American neighbours.

[Tlicho Land Claims and Self-Government Act, December 6th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I have had the honour over the last four years of working for the Algonquin Nation in Quebec, a proud community that never signed any treaties with Canada and is still continuing their fight to get land deals worked out. In fact, one community I worked with started out with a 70,000 acre reserve. That reserve arbitrarily was moved down to 38,000 acres and then moved down to 9,000 acres.

That community is down to 4,000 acres today on the worst section of ground in a most beautiful agricultural region. That land will never come back to them. The damage this has done to that community has impacts on generation after generation.

I had the great pleasure of working with that community in trying to redress some of those historic grievances, so I am very pleased to hear the hon. member's words about the bill and the attempt to move forward with our first nation neighbours. Does the hon. member think that Bill C-14 might be a model for other first nation communities that have been left out and still need land deals settled? On top of that, how can we start to move these forward in a timely and just manner?

[Pierre Berton, December 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a giant in Canadian cultural identity, Mr. Pierre Berton, who just passed away.

I do not think it is possible for people of my generation to even put into context the impact that Pierre Berton had on our consciousness in terms of creating an identity, of popularizing Canadian history and teaching a generation such as myself about who our real heroes are.

We have lost a giant. I know I am not doing nearly the justice that is deserved of the man who put such a great sense of who we are as a nation before us.

I would like to pay tribute to Mr. Berton and the great works he did. He spoke about average Canadians. He spoke about the farmers. He spoke about the miners. He spoke about average Canadians who built a great nation. I would like to pay tribute to him today.

[Supply, December 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, that is a fundamental question. I was surprised that when my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue asked the question, the minister never answered it.

In our region, northeastern Ontario, the Timiskaming side and the Témiscamingue side in Quebec are almost an integrated region in terms of agriculture. We have one plant that could deal with the backlog. It was supported by provincial inspectors in Quebec. There was no problem in Ontario. Yet, the federal government intervened and shut that plant down from dealing with Quebec producers.

That is the only concrete action I have seen the government take. Why did it shut that plant down? I do not know. It boggles my mind. This was meat that was going to be sold in a regional market. In addition, we have the situation with Colbex-Levinoff. We have the UPA standing up and saying that we need a basic cull price. That is a position that farmers across Canada would support because many of our farmers are dependent on Colbex-Levinoff. Colbex-Levinoff has shut its plant down and we are hearing nothing about this.

I do not even know what to say. I am sorry. I wish I could answer the hon. member in a more eloquent way, but it is such a bizarre situation. We have on the one hand, the shutting down of a plant to Quebec producers in a region where we are basically one, and on the other hand, we are allowing the giant packers to squeeze whatever money they can out of our cull producers who are getting sometimes as low as 9¢ a pound, maybe 16¢ a pound. When the UPA asks for 42¢ a pound as the basic floor price, that is considered outrageous. Our federal government is not standing up or even commenting about this. For once, I am absolutely at a loss for words.

[Supply, December 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I was not at the meeting when the minister was in a neighbouring riding, but all my farmers were in New Liskeard. Of course there was enthusiasm. Farmers wanted to believe this would work. I wanted to be as enthusiastic with them when I went back. I told them that a lot of things were on the table.

The problem with the CAIS program is that if farmers hold back their inventory, that completely changes their reference margins and so they are penalized. The vast majority of the most affected farmers could not sell. There is a major discrepancy in how the CAIS program values what is considered the inventory and costs, and how producers actually face costs.

At this point, the CAIS program cannot respond to the beef crisis. We are in desperate straits. If this were a year ago, we could redesign a whole program. At this point, we need to be looking at giving farmers the debt relief they need. I support the idea of $200 a head for a set aside. I support those motions. However, in terms of what farmers have suffered and in terms of their immediate losses, the CAIS program has not delivered.

How would I restructure it? We are going to have to look at farmers' overall debt and find a way to target what they should have made and respond. We need to have people answering the phones when farmers get their letters of rejection. There is nobody in Ontario to deal with this, not as far as I can tell. If there were staff somewhere out there to deal with these emergency cases and emergency rejections, maybe the program would begin to work. Right now, the only things going out to communities are rejection letters.

[Supply, December 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite simple. We have been hearing amazing press communiqués about this fantastic package. Like the hon. member, when I phone home, I cannot find anybody who has benefited from this package.

I have been dealing with the minister's staff on cases and we have had no response. There is no response because the CAIS program will continue on as a program for which it was originally set out. I finally pushed one of the CAIS officials who said to me that it was not designed as disaster relief. If it was not designed as disaster relief, then why is it being applied to the biggest single disaster in Canadian agricultural history?

Every farmer who we know who has suffered a major loss from BSE, who has seen a major downturn in inventory, is being told they do not qualify for CAIS, yet they have put money into it. If these great moneys have gone out, I have not seen where they have gone nor has the hon. member. Therefore, all I can assume is what we have heard in the House since September 10 is the big whopper.

[Supply, December 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise in the House to speak about the families of northern Ontario, particularly families across rural Canada. As we know, these families are living through the worst economic crisis in Canadian history, much worse than the dust bowl because it only hit one region of the country.

As I always do, I prepared for this speech by phoning home. I spoke with producers who I had not had a chance to talk to in a week or two to see if there had been any changes. What I heard was a very depressing and damning indictment of the September 10 BSE package. Perhaps the clearest response I got was from the wife of a cattle rancher, who I phone often. She said, “I don't think my husband is going to phone you back this time. He says all we hear is talk and nothing is changing”.

I spoke to another farm woman and asked if she could give me an update on what kind of CAIS program money was going into the region. She said four words, “Zero, zero, zero, zero”. There was none. It had not come into the region. The only thing people were receiving from CAIS were rejection letters.

Thinking maybe she was wrong, I phoned another woman, who is very connected in my region of Timmins—James Bay. She said that she had not met a single family in the region, who had applied under CAIS program, who had received anything more than a rejection letter. Yet day after day in the House the minister stands and spins a lot of great numbers about how great the CAIS program has been. Unfortunately, farm families cannot feed their cattle or their children on sound bytes. The CAIS program is not disaster relief. It is simply a disaster.

We have a situation now where farmers who have been forced to hold back cattle or who have been unable to pay for new cattle because of the financial losses they took in 2003 now have been ruled ineligible for CAIS because there has been a change in their inventory.

One producer told me that the CAIS officials told him that because his inventory in 2003 was so markedly different, they would have to affect his reference margins for the last five years. He took his hit from BSE, and what does CAIS have to offer? Zero, zero, zero, zero.

I have talked with dairy producers who have put up $35,000 to be in the program and they are ineligible for anything. In fact, the word among the dairy producers who I know is stay away from CAIS.

It has been nearly two months since I challenged the minister to meet first-hand with the Algoma cattle farmers who came the night of our emergency debate. I commend the minister for stepping out and meeting with them. At that time, there was a lot of talk about how we would make this work. In that time, they have heard nothing back. In fact, I just phoned Algoma this morning. Ten of the eleven farmers who were involved had not even received letters from CAIS. They know what they will get when it comes: more rejections.

For almost two months, I phoned the minister's office to speak with him, or with his staff or with CAIS program representatives with regard to a producer who had received a letter of rejection from CAIS. The bank is moving in on him now. After weeks of calling, we were finally told by the so-called MP's hotline that they were having logistical problems; logistical problems meaning that they do not have any staff to deal with the massive volume of rejection letters. In the last correspondence we received, we were told they would get to this file “as soon as we can”. We are talking about third and fourth generation farm families who are going under.

In terms of the set aside program that is being offered, I find it shocking that our buffalo ranchers are not eligible. We know the buffalo market is up to 240,000 head, most of it based in western Canada. They are not eligible for this program, yet they have taken serious hits from the border closing.

We are talking about trying to build our export markets overseas. Meanwhile, we are stuck with 240,000 head of bison, most of them in western Canada, and ranchers cannot even get their markets into eastern Canada. While we are talking about foreign markets, where are the incentive programs and the work to help restore the buffalo economy by getting sales into eastern Canada?

We have been talking a lot about slaughter capacity. I have heard the minister use the phrase “market distortion”. The only market distortion I see in terms of slaughter capacity is the market distortion that has been created by the giant packers. The money they are paying out is a disgrace.

We talk about loan guarantees. Loan guarantees will not build a plant because we are not in normal market times. Loan loss guarantees will not help the dairy producers who get 16¢ a pound for cull cows. They will not help the farm families who now have been told that they cannot ship to Levinoff. The packer is closing its plant rather than agreeing to a modest floor price. We have no action from the government on this issue.

One giant packer has made a move which is a major threat for cull producers across Canada, and we have heard nothing from the government. We have asked for direct action, but we are not getting it. Excuse me, the government has taken decisive action in one area. It shut down the plant in North Bay which dealt with cull and other cows that came out of northwestern Quebec. It shut that plant down to Quebec farmers.

We are in the middle of the greatest agricultural crisis in Canadian history and the CFIA is holding to the letter of the law. How do we tell that to the farmers in Abitibi—Témiscamingue? I know my colleague asked the question earlier. He did not get an answer and I doubt that I will get one either. The government is taking no efforts to stand up to the giant packers, which are squeezing our producers. The only action that has been taken is to shut down small regional plants that try to intervene to help the backlog, interprovincially.

I have tried to figure out why we have had such a small movement on implementation of these programs. Farmers I talk to say that they do not know where the programs are. They have not seen any money. It seems as though we have been stalling and delaying. I am very pleased the Bloc has brought forward its motion because it raises the issue of why we have seen so little concrete results on the ground.

If I were to look at this cynically, I would say that it would be in the interests of the government to gamble that the border would reopen, that we could delay these programs a little longer until they did, that Canadians would think the matter was settled and that it would just write-off that $5 billion loss to our farm families across the country.

We have heard a lot of talk in the House that there is a plan for dairy, but I have not seen it. We had a $200 million export business in breeding that has gone. If things do not change soon, we will lose that forever. We talk about the kind of money needed to support dairy. On paper, a dairy farmer might be worth $200,000, $150,000 or $400,000, but that money is continually flowing through. If he has to hold back inventory and if he does not get money for the cull cows, that is money that will not go to make payments. If payments are not made, the bankers will start to move. We are seeing the bankers moving on different operations now.

When we talk about emergency measures, one of the most important emergency measures we will have to see, given the absolute failure of CAIS, is debt and tax relief for the farmers who have to get out of the industry because they cannot hold on any longer. We know that the soonest these producers will see any realizable money is September of next year. Considering the loses they have taken, that is not good enough.

Another farmer gave me a very straightforward analysis of this crisis and the larger crisis of rural Canada. He told me that in 1972 the price of bread was 39¢, and there was 4¢ of wheat in the bread. Today, the price is $1.39 and he still only gets 4¢ for wheat on each loaf of bread. He said that his costs had gone up 400%. He does not have any other options, except he has a CAIS letter of rejection to take to the bank. That is four generations of equity gone in 16 months.

We can say that we have a long term and a medium term solution, but really we do not have any solution on the ground. It is not going to the producers. If the hon. minister wants to go to northern Ontario with me or wants to go anywhere else, we can knock on doors of farm families and see how CAIS is working for them. If I heard positive CAIS stories, believe me, I would stand up in the House and say it. I want to send a positive message because our farmers need to hear that,. However, they have not heard anything positive, and I cannot come in here and lie.

I invite the minister to come with me. Wherever the hon. minister wants to go, I will go. I will knock on whatever door the hon. minister tells me to knock on to meet producers who have received CAIS payments. I have not met any yet.

I will close with a little story. I was up in the great town of Cochrane, Ontario, which is in my riding. It used to be one of the largest agricultural regions in northern Ontario. Most of that agriculture is gone, except for beef. I was at the fall fair. Farmers told me that in the summer they had their farmers' markets, and all the tourists come to visit. However, there are no farmers at those markets anymore. They now sell the little Phentex booties and some other knick-knacks. A woman tourist said that she had come to farmers' market, but there were no farmers. She asked where they were, and one women said that people did not want farmers, so there were none.

We are here today to debate this. We have had more emergency debates on agriculture since 1999 than on any other single issue, and things continue to get worse. I do not want to hear other numbers from the minister. I want to know where the CAIS program dollars are going and who is receiving them.