David Anderson

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, you have been sitting here throughout the evening and have heard the enthusiasm with which both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food spoke about supply management. As you know, this party supports it. It was in our platform. It was passed at our convention last year in Montreal. The member can be aware that we support supply management and we support our agricultural producers across this country.

[Agriculture, April 6th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I want to congratulate you on the appointment to your position. I also want to thank the constituents of Cypress Hills—Grasslands for giving me the privilege of returning once again to the House to represent them.

There is a story of a mountaineer whose name was Yvon Chouinard who was going out with a group of his friends to climb Mount Edith Cavell. They got out on the mountain, set up their tent in front of the big rock face and a storm settled in and they sat in their tents for about a week. Eventually the storm subsided and they were able to go on. After he was done with that climb, he said that it did not pay to look at a great wall for too long.

With agriculture I think we find ourselves up against a great wall but I am thankful that this government is not one that will sit and look at that great wall for too long. This government is prepared to move and to begin to improve the situation for our farmers and producers across Canada.

I am a farmer and am proud of it. I grew up and spent my life on a farm. I live in the farmhouse that my great uncle built in 1918. I will continue to have an interest in our farm. I understand the pressures. I started farming before I was out of high school and farmed through the seventies, eighties and nineties and I understand the pressures that farmers and producers are under.

We find ourselves here again tonight discussing agriculture in a late night debate. I look around and see some familiar faces and some new ones. We have talked time and again about the fact that we did not want to find ourselves back here. I see the former chairman of the agriculture committee nodding his head because he knows that we have had those conversations.

Nobody in the country wants agriculture to be a welfare case but it almost seems to have been the intent of the previous government. We have the opportunity to make substantive structural changes to agriculture that will give it a chance to succeed.

Earlier tonight we heard the Leader of the Opposition say that it was time for our party to take responsibility for agriculture and we are prepared to do that but I think it is important, first, to talk about the state of agriculture that was left by the previous government. It is important that people understand what was not done and from where we have to begin.

I think the state of agriculture looks like an old farm house that has been abandoned out on the prairies with the roof leaking, the windows gone, the doors e hanging off it and the shutters broken. Some have an expectation that it will become a mansion overnight. We need to tell people that it will take us some time to make the changes that will make a substantive difference for farmers. Our job is to make it liveable first and then restore it to its proper place, and our intention is to do that.

Things were in worse shape than we realized. We found that the farm income support program has basically been universally rejected by everyone. The provinces at one point said that they wanted to continue it and now we hear them saying that they do not want it continued either. The main farm income support program that farmers had in the country has been rejected by virtually everyone in the industry.

We had a reorganization of the agriculture department a couple of years ago which was a fairly quiet thing. A lot of people did not realize that it happened. The effects of that are still being felt through the department. Research and development capabilities were stunted by that shift and that is something that people need to understand. I had a chance to spend some time talking to some of our folks who work in that area. As of last week, late March, they still had not received their budgets for this year. Obviously some changes need to be made in order to begin to move ahead. Actually I found that scientists were having to raise their own money to fund their projects.

We talked a little tonight about bilaterals. Nothing has developed in that area. People have talked about the fact that we need to move ahead on that, and we believe we do, but we have had no movement or development by the previous government on that front. It takes a while to get that up and running. We have had about two bilaterals versus about 40 that the United States has signed since the year 2000. It has moved ahead and it has started to take some of our markets. We need to move on those issues.

Biofuels is now a big issue in our country. Everyone is talking about biodiesel and ethanol. We need to have a national fuel standard. We do not even have that. The previous government never did the groundwork to lay down the standard that we needed.

Earlier we heard someone talk about the ethanol expansion program. That was intended to go to farm communities, to rural areas, to small and medium sized projects so that farmers and producers could be involved in that. The previous government rerouted that money to the large companies. The small projects in the small rural areas where producers wanted to be part of those projects were left out of that project. There needs to be some work done on that as well.

We have a huge job ahead of us and we might as well tell folks that right now, but one of the things I want to say is that agriculture is not dead. Those of us who have been in agriculture know that it takes a lot more than what we are facing right now to chase us off the farm and to kill agriculture.

When I was campaigning before the election, I asked people what they were doing on their farms and in their communities that was successful. I want to read for members a few of those things.

I know farmers and producers who are running seed-cleaning plants and who actually told me that last year they had a very good year. I know farmers who are growing specialty crops who are making unique profits on very low acres.

I had people tell me that they have diversified and switched to herbs and spices. Even in dryland Saskatchewan they are growing them and marketing them around the globe. I had people tell me that they decided to try tourism along with farming and they have been able to do that on some real high end levels.

I had people tell me that they have set up hunting camps in Saskatchewan and internationally and those camps have helped them with the farm.

We have manufacturing in our riding, both on the farm and off. We have food processing. A young couple in my riding developed a new lentil pasta. They now have it on the market, are trying to find shelf space for it and are finding success with it.

We have specialty meats. Actually, some people had gone out of producing beef and chicken because they were making money processing that product.

We have organic specialization. We have producer owned co-ops. We have seed growers. We have retail operations that are owned by farmers and producers.

Agriculture is not dead, but we need to be able to give farmers and producers the opportunity to succeed.

I believe that another thing we need to do to give them an opportunity to succeed is to reach a good trade deal at the WTO. We depend seriously on trade, with 80% of our agricultural products exported. Producers desperately need a rules-based international trading system that is fair to them. We want to be able to support free trade and fair trade. The farmers in my part of the world need a good, aggressive free trade agreement if they are going to do well in the future.

We are told that they can gain up to $20 a tonne on their wheat if we can get a good trade agreement. For canola, which is grown in a lot of our areas, they say they can get up to $70 a tonne if we get a good trade agreement. It is important that we have a level international playing field. We need that. Involved in that are the three things we have talked about over the last few years as we have been involved in trade talks. We need to eliminate trade-distorting domestic support. We need to reduce export subsidization. We need to assure real market access to other markets.

In order to give them opportunities, especially the western Canadian farmers, I think we also we need to give them marketing choice. We need to move to a situation where they are able to begin to make choices about marketing their own products, especially grain. Western Canadians need the opportunity to succeed. They need to be able to dream about success. Why not?

I did a study about four years ago. We had 120 specialty crop processing plants in our province. We had 14 flour mills, 12 of them owned by two foreign companies. There are opportunities in specialty crops. There can be in grain as well. This government is committed to the transition of the Canadian Wheat Board and giving farmers the choice on how they market and process their own grain.

We continue to get a strong message from our farmers in a designated area that they want marketing choice. The industry tells us they are ready for a change. Producers are creative and have demonstrated their ability to adapt and succeed. We will stand beside the board as that transition is made to ensure that farmers who support the board will have it as a continuing option for them.

We believe we can work with the board. In fact, we have worked with it to get the initial prices increased. That was announced yesterday. Wheat and feed wheat prices increase by from $13 to $23 a tonne, while durum will increase by $15 to $19, and barley by $10. This change obviously will not solve 13 years of Liberal rule, but it will be a good start.

Obviously we have a lot of problems to deal with. One of the bigger problems is farm income. We have heard a commitment tonight that we are going to deal with that. We are going to deal with that as we promised in the election campaign. We have said we will replace CAIS. We are committed to doing that. We have said that we will implement a new disaster assistance program and we are committing to adding $2.5 billion to farm income over the next five years in order to give farmers the beginning of success in agriculture.

I want to finish with a short illustration. I am reminded of a cartoon, a picture of a little duck, with a ball glove, standing out in the middle of a ball field. The ball gets hit and he waits for the ball to come to him. He is anticipating it and the little bulb over his head says, “Success is when skill meets opportunity”. The ball goes over his head and hits the ground. Then he thinks, “Failure is when fantasy meets reality”.

We have had enough of that. We believe we can do better. We know what needs to be done and we have the ability to do it. We can and will do that so we can achieve success for our agricultural producers across Canada.

[Transportation Amendment Act, November 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I want to express my appreciation to my colleague for his well thought out speech and the positions that he takes. Transportation is a difficult portfolio to handle because it is as wide and varied as is agriculture, for example. However, when transportation and agriculture are combined, sometimes the results are fairly interesting.

I want to talk a little about the project underway in western Canada right now. The government has made a decision that it will sell its 12,000 hopper rail cars. Over the years, there has been a push by farmers to get control of these cars. The taxpayers already have paid for them once, but farmers want to get control of them.

Early on in the project, which is almost 10 years ago now, there was a discussion about the fact that there would be lower freight rates for farmers and that farmers would be able to save money through this project. It has been interesting, as the project has developed, it seems the idea that farmers are going to save money has disappeared from the formula. Now when Farmer Rail Coalition is talking about the rail cars, there is no longer the statement being made that farmers are going to save a lot of money, and that is of concern to some of us.

As the commitment to saving farmers money has disappeared, what has reappeared is Liberal connections within the project. Last week the government announced that it was moving ahead with this project and it was going to be turning it over to a group in western Canada. It seemed that the government was doing this as another election promise. We saw $23 billion in 23 days, and this was part of that billion dollar a day spending program.

It is interesting that the finance minister's campaign co-chair for Saskatchewan has been involved in the project from the beginning. Last Friday we rose in the House during question period and asked the finance minister if he could tell us how much his campaign manager had received from the project. He could not do that or he refused to do that.

Does the member find that this political interference and appearance of rewarding people politically is found in other segments of the transportation segments in Canada?

[Agriculture, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we will see how this works out for farmers.

For 10 years the FRCC has been funded by farmer and taxpayer money. The finance minister's good friends have been involved in this project from the beginning. Farmers have been billed for a decade by his buddies.

Now that an agreement has been reached, will the government or the finance minister inform the House how much money his Saskatchewan campaign chair has made off this project since its inception?

[Agriculture, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, for 10 years the government has supposedly had its 12,000 hopper railcars for sale. Apparently the government was looking forward to resolving this issue next year.

All of a sudden, just before the election, the government has accelerated and finalized the approval process.

Was this rushed through because the finance minister's Saskatchewan campaign manager is involved in this project and the government knows his days at the trough are soon over?

[Agriculture, November 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal culture of entitlement is alive and well as the government goes about treating public institutions as its own private assets. For six weeks, we have demanded that the government raise the Canadian Wheat Board initial prices for western farmers. The government will not give farmers their own money because it is too busy spreading it out to its friends.

Farmers have been paying for David Herle, the king of untendered contracts and the Prime Minister's campaign manager, to attend Canadian Wheat Board meetings. Farmers are going broke while the Prime Minister's friends belly up to the trough. Why is the Prime Minister making things so hard for farmers but so easy for his friends?

[Agriculture, November 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, thousands of cash-strapped farmers are demanding this change. That was not good enough for the government until there was an election imminent. Farmers want to know what is going on.

The Canadian Wheat Board has hired the Canadian Wheat Board minister's former campaign manager. The board has employed the Prime Minister's former campaign manager. The board is putting money into a project involving the finance minister's campaign manager. Now it has hired a Liberal dominated public relations firm.

The government and the Canadian Wheat Board have lots of money to spend on Liberals. When will the government raise the initial price and give farmers their own money?

[Agriculture, November 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, western Canadian farmers are forced to sell their wheat through the Canadian Wheat Board at a price set by the government.

For the last five weeks we have stood in the House on behalf of western Canadian farmers and demanded that the government raise the initial prices. Two weeks ago, when my colleague from Souris—Moose Mountain raised this issue during question period, the minister said he would be responding immediately. It is two weeks later and there has been absolutely nothing.

Will the minister finally hear the pleas of western Canadian farmers and raise the initial prices, or did he mislead the House?

[Criminal Code, November 14th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, we do not need the government to tell us or give us the impression that it is going to protect farmers because it certainly has not in the past. Nothing in the legislation indicates that it would protect farmers or hunters in spite of what the member said.

The government's past history indicates that farmers are at risk every time the government says it will look after them. We have a firearms registry that does not work and that has been nothing but a problem for farmers and legitimate gun owners, such as hunters.

In the past, animal cruelty bills have come forward from the government that have not been acceptable and have not been workable for our farm communities. We have had failed farm programs for 12 years now. We have a failed trade position at the WTO. The government says that it is protecting farmers but it is not doing that.

The biggest joke of all was when I heard the member blaming us for the failure of the animal cruelty bills in the past. The government has had a majority in the House of Commons for the past 10 years and if it had wanted to pass an animal cruelty or an animals rights bill it could have done that but it chose not to do so. It is not appropriate for the member opposite to say that this has something to do with the party on this side of the House. It needs to be understood that the legislation contains no protection guarantee for farmers and hunters.

The member talked about the importance of increasing the penalties. I do not think any of us would disagree that we need stronger penalties dealing with animal cruelty in this country. However the problem is not with the length of the penalties. It is with the government and what the justice system under it does with those penalties.

Does the member actually believe that under the Liberal government people would ever get more than six months in jail for whatever they did to an animal when we have people walking around this country right now who have killed somebody with a cue ball in a sock and were given house arrest? I do not think that is reasonable and I do not think he can expect that we will ever see anyone in prison for more than six months on an animal cruelty charge as long as the Liberal government is in power.

[Criminal Code, November 14th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I was interested in the member's speech when he talked primarily about personal domiciles, about domestic issues. I want to ask him about that or challenge him a little bit. How does he see this new law being used to address domestic situations?

I am thinking particularly in the context of the fact that we have an overtaxed justice system right now. Even as we have seen this summer, people who steal up to a couple of million dollars get house arrest. How does he see this law being applied in those domestic situations when our police are already so overtaxed as it is that they are hardly able to apply the law anyway? I would be interested in his comments.