Mr. Speaker, I want to express my appreciation for the good job my colleague from Battlefords—Lloydminster is doing and for the points he made here. Not only did the Reform Alliance party at the time conduct a series of hearings across the country, but the agriculture committee did as well in the last Parliament. We presented a report that we thought was balanced. It had all party support. The report contained a number of solutions to the agriculture situation. We never heard anything more about it. The report was stored away somewhere.
This morning I was disappointed yet again. I have only been in Ottawa since 2000, but already there have been three agriculture ministers. It seems that for some reason the Liberals think that the more volume and the more noise they create the more that impresses farmers. They do not understand that farmers are not impressed by that. Farmers are impressed by production and they just are not getting it from the government.
Twenty minutes ago I was on the phone to a producer who had called me about the CAIS program. He was really worked up. He said that he had sent in his application. He paid a lot of money to an accountant to get the application done correctly. He sent it in and it was sent back to him. He told me that it was missing a third of the payment that should have been there.
He told me what was done. He said that they took a look at some of the cheques. The Canadian Wheat Board issues interim payments and final payments and they got them confused. The final payments are what should have been figured in and he had included that. He had an explanation for it. They sent it back and said that they did not apply, that they were not applicable.
The producer said that they obviously fit. The accountant had fit them in. They made it work. They sent him a cheque with money missing. He said it was so frustrating. He said that when he calls and tries to talk to someone about this program, he reaches a different person every time. No one works on one file. He said that not only that, but they do not know what they are talking about. They have no understanding of agriculture.
He asked when this problem could be looked at. There are no deadlines on when they are going to do what it is that they want to do. He said that it was very difficult to get any explanation from them about what is going on with this program.
This is a program that is actually into its third year of development. If the government were honest about it, we are supposed to be reviewing it. When that topic was raised at the agriculture committee, we were told that the review will begin next summer. According to the guidelines of the program we are supposed to be in the review. The program is not even working properly yet. There is a lot of trouble out there.
Producers are calling me saying that they sent in their deposits and applications and they are not getting anything back, but a neighbour who did not even put in his deposit has already received a cheque from the program.
Some people have paid up to $4,000 in accountants' fees trying to straighten out what needs to be done in order to apply for this program. The program is convoluted and complicated. As I have said before, there are employees who do not seem to understand the program. The farmers are caught in a bureaucratic hell. The farmers are waiting for their money. The program is supposed to pay the money out and it just does not come.
As was so aptly said this morning by our agriculture critic, the member for Haldimand—Norfolk, farmers should not have to fight their own government. That seems to be what they are doing with this program. It seems to be what they have had to do from the beginning. As my colleague has just said, we knew from the beginning that there were major flaws in the program. The government would not listen to the people who are telling them that.
To be honest, I do not think that even our call today to set aside the producer deposit is going to go far enough to fix this program. For those farmers who are not able to qualify, that does not change the criteria by which they fail to qualify when many of them should qualify.
It is not only the CAIS program that has been a problem for these farmers. As was mentioned earlier, BSE has been a problem as well. The government has failed to deal with producers. It has failed particularly to deal with the United States.
The minister said that there have been dozens of meetings and that they spend a lot of time talking with the Americans. The Canadian producers know nothing about this. There has been no public presentation by the Liberal government in Washington.
In fact, one of the biggest places the government fell down was when R-CALF was able to get an injunction the first time. The government never even responded. Interestingly enough, R-CALF apparently has been able to schedule a hearing for an injunction at the beginning of March. I would be interested to know if the government is even considering being there and seeing what is going on and making an application and defending the interests of western Canadian producers and Canadian producers in general at those hearings.
We have no strength at the border and it is not just BSE; it shows up in other places. I would like to bring a different dimension to this issue.
Just last week the European Union announced that it is considering putting export subsidies on their grain sales. For the first time in two years the EU has approved the use of those export subsidies. The last time the EU did it was in 2002. At that time it subsidized 10 million tonnes of wheat at an average of 11 euros per tonne. My understanding is it was about $17 per tonne.
Now traders are again being invited to tender up to two million tonnes that will be eligible for these export subsidies. I do not know if anyone else has heard the government say anything about that but I heard absolutely no response from it. One more time in that trade area it has fallen down.
The United Kingdom Home-Grown Cereals Authority said that the reason it was doing this was because the wheat from the Ukraine and some of the Soviet Union countries was going into North Africa at prices of $10 and $15 below what the world market prices were supposed to have been.
However the government does not respond at any time to these actions that are taking place. I do not think there is a legitimate reason why the European Union should be able to get away with this. If there is overproduction, it being allowed to additionally subsidize those sales only creates more production. It makes the problem worse, not better. Where is our government on this? It is silent as usual. Why is it not saying anything?
I want to talk a little about how subsidization works in the United States. A report came out about a month ago which mentioned the top organizations that were actually being subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. In 2003, U.S. taxpayers doled out $16.4 billion in direct farm subsidies. That is a 27% increase over 2002. Once again, our farmers are being left out of the loop.
I want to point out where some of those subsidies are going because I think is important to understand. Riceland Foods based in Stuttgart, Arkansas, the biggest U.S. rice producer, collected almost $70 million in subsidization. The second producer, Rice Mill, collected $51 million. Farmers' Rice Co-op collected $17 million. Pilgrim's Pride, the biggest poultry producer in the United States, collected $11 million. Interestingly enough, the fifth on the list was Ducks Unlimited, a real agricultural producer organization, received $7.1 million in direct U.S. taxpayer subsidies.
The government has been dead silent about any of those issues. Violations of trade regulations must be going on in that U.S. farm bill but our government has never yet addressed or challenged those issues. It leaves our producers hanging. It brings us to the point where our producers are begging for support and help but cannot get it from the government. I know farmers are getting sick and tired of this. Why is the government silent all the time?
I am thankful that the opposition today has come forward with some good solutions to the problems.
I heard earlier that we have a two tier suggestion for helping with the problems but I think it is actually three tier. The member for Battlefords—Lloydminster spoke earlier about the whole farm production insurance program that we would like to put in place. That is the first tier. That is a production insurance program that would be based on things like a 10 year average of value and production costs figured into it.
The second tier would be a disaster program. That actually was recommended by the House of Commons committee in the last Parliament. I see my colleague across the way who was the chair at the time, the member for Miramichi, who did a good job in leading that committee which came forward with that recommendation. I do not know if he ever heard anything from the government in response to that recommendation but we certainly did not. We called for an emergency disaster fund to be set up to protect agriculture.
The third tier we are suggesting and one which we have been suggesting for years is that the federal government should be responsible for mitigating the trade pressures that agriculture producers feel. It is an important thing and it is something that we feel needs to be done.
We have come forth with three good suggestions for the government. The minister said earlier that he wanted to hear a process but we are going to come with solutions instead of a process for fixing things. First, we are suggesting a farm insurance program in which producers can participate. Second, we are suggesting a second level of support be available through an emergency assistance fund for the real disasters that take place. Third, it is important that the trade injury that is experienced by producers be taken care of by the federal government.
Agriculture is an absolutely crucial industry to this country and to my riding. I am glad to see that we are debating it today. The opposition is once again standing up for producers, trying to get the government to listen to what producers are saying and trying to put programs in place that will actually work for them. We are also trying to get the government motivated on the international scene so that it will begin to protect our producers at that level as well.