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Crucial Fact

  • Her favourite word was help.

Last in Parliament May 2021, as Conservative MP for Haldimand—Norfolk (Ontario)

Won her last election, in 2019, with 47% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Supply February 3rd, 2005

Madam Speaker, as the official opposition agriculture critic, I am pleased to rise today to speak to our party's motion that calls on the Liberal government to get rid of the Canadian agricultural income stabilization, or CAIS, program cash deposit requirement as well as to honour the commitments that it has already made to Canadian farmers.

However, before I continue, I would like to thank our leader, the member for Calgary Southwest, and my colleagues in the Conservative caucus for supporting me in recognizing the magnitude of this issue and tabling the very important motion that we have before us today.

I must admit that it may seem a little odd to ask the Liberal government to vote on a motion that among other things asks it to honour its commitments, as we know that honouring commitments is not something the Liberals are very good at. Think NAFTA, think GST, think of their commitment to defend the traditional definition of marriage. The list of broken promises could take up all my time today. Suffice it to say, agricultural producers who have suffered through difficult circumstances such as BSE, avian flu, drought or prairie frost are fed up with empty government promises that aid is finally coming their way.

Just this week I received a letter from yet another farmer saying that he was still waiting his CAIS cash advance payment for 2003. This is simply unacceptable. How can producers who have creditors banging on their door assure them that money will be coming when the government can give them no guarantees as to when they can expect the funds?

We have recently learned that many grain and oilseed farmers may have to wait until January 2006 to receive anything for the losses due to their price collapse of 2004. As if the unending delay in receiving funds through the CAIS program were not enough, the government continues to insist that producers enrolled in the CAIS program provide an onerous cash deposit to trigger payments from the program.

Many banks are even refusing to lend money to farmers who offer their future cash payments as security because the banks have no confidence in how much money will actually be paid or when.

The CAIS deposit requirement has been universally rejected by producers across the country as a policy that unfairly hurts our farmers. It ties up producers money and deposits that could otherwise be used to invest in much needed farm equipment or to pay off other farm expenses.

Agriculture producers across the country, struggling with extreme conditions outside their control, do not need yet another financial burden to ensure that relief payments make their way to them. That is why I am calling on the Minister of Agriculture to immediately drop the cash deposit program required by CAIS.

This is a very serious situation. I am sure that many Canadians would be appalled to learn that the realized net farm income for Canadian producers in 2003 was a negative number nationally. That is right: negative income. Furthermore, although our country's agricultural exports have steadily increased, farm incomes are dropping rapidly.

One example is, according to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, in 1981 our farmers received just 5¢ for every $1 of cornflakes sold to the consumer. Now, over 20 years later with a lot of inflation in between, our farmers are only getting 3¢ on $1. This is unacceptable.

Canadian producers compete with treasuries around the world. Many of our global competitors have significantly richer domestic subsidies that give direct payments, actually improving farmer income, not simply supporting producers when losses occur. Most important, their programs are free and do not demand upfront costs, deposits or fees. The deposit or any other upfront cost for safety net programming only further disadvantages Canadian producers on the international stage.

Even the parliamentary secretary for agriculture has acknowledged that the CAIS program was never designed to deal with disasters or trade injury. It was just supposed to provide income support within the normal flux and flow of business. That is fair enough. The problem is that there are not any programs at all to deal with disasters, trade or otherwise. Everything is ad hoc. There is no plan. There is no standard. There is no money. Even when the money is promised, it does not get delivered.

Take for example the money promised for the federal cattle set-aside program that was announced in Calgary last September. As of last week, we had reports that the Alberta government had not yet received a nickel from the federal government. This is unacceptable.

With regard the much touted loan loss reserve program to stimulate investment in desperately needed slaughterhouse capacity, we were told that the application forms would not be available for three months. It is five months later and there are still no forms. There are no funds. This is unacceptable.

What about the tobacco farmers of Ontario and Quebec, two-thirds of whom are in my home riding of Haldimand—Norfolk? Three days before the election was called last spring, they were promised an aid package that would have seen cheques in their hands by October at the latest. They have not received a penny yet. Now the government has changed the rules, lowered the funding and said, “take it or leave it”. This, too, is totally unacceptable.

I have heard a lot of people complain and say, “farmers always keep whining. What are they complaining about. The governments keep announcing more money for them, but the farmers are never happy”. What these people do not realize is that the same money gets announced time and again. It gets announced, it gets promised, but it does not get delivered.

I can say with confidence that our agricultural products are among the best in the world. They are safe and they are reliable. However, they are becoming more expensive to produce because the farmers have to spend an amazing amount of time and money on complying with increased government legislation, regulation and applications for safety nets.

I have spoken with several farm accountants over the last while. Even the brightest of them admit that they have a really hard time understanding the CAIS program and the calculations. If, with all their experience, they find the program a shemozzle of a bamboozle, how could independent farmers be expected to cope with the challenge? The answer is simple: they cannot.

The unnecessary and unproductive complexity of CAIS demands that farmers who need the program most, those facing tough times, have to spend money that they can ill afford, not only on the deposit requirement, but also on accountants and lawyers just to make their application. The system is so bad that I know of one farmer who completely retired from farming, saying, “This CAIS program is just the last straw”.

It is abundantly clear that in the face of declining farm income, this government continues to fail farmers by providing inadequate income support programs for producers struggling with circumstances and conditions outside their control. Our farmers are fighting foreign tariffs and subsidies on the world market. They are fighting disease and frost from Mother Nature. Now they are fighting for survival. They should not have to fight their own government.

The status quo is not acceptable. I call on the Minister of Agriculture to ensure that our farmers receive responsive relief in real time, not phantom farm aid, not phantom funds.

Getting rid of the CAIS deposit requirement would provide immediate relief to thousands of producers at a time when relief is most needed. I urge the Minister of Agriculture to heed the call of producers from coast to coast and immediately drop the CAIS cash deposit requirement. I urge all members of this House to vote in favour of our motion today.

Supply February 3rd, 2005

moved:

That, in light of the numerous recent disasters affecting agricultural communities across Canada and the government's failure to deliver timely financial relief to struggling farmers, whether by the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) program or other programs, the House call on the government to immediately drop the CAIS deposit requirement and honour the commitments it has already made to Canadian producers.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act December 7th, 2004

Madam Speaker, I apologize. I thought I had another 10 minutes.

I would just add that our primary concern with Bill C-27 is that it does not incorporate any aspect of accountability for fair and effective enforcement on the part of the CFIA, an organization that has acknowledged it is known for its lack of accountability.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement Act December 7th, 2004

Madam Speaker, I rise in the House today on Bill C-27, an act to provide the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with enforcement and inspection authorities.

When the CFIA was created in 1997, the objective was to facilitate a more uniform and consistent approach to food inspection in Canada. Instead, the legislative framework governing the CFIA resulted in a hodgepodge of legislative authority that was anything but uniform and consistent.

Employees of the CFIA have been administering and enforcing 13 different statutes without a uniform set of powers, rights or obligations, which this proposed act would finally give them.

Seven years after the creation of the CFIA, our veterinarians, inspectors, systems specialists, support employees, financial officers, researchers and laboratory technicians may finally receive the tools they need to do their jobs effectively. It is high time.

In the agriculture minister's news release on Bill C-27, the minister praised the Canadian Food Inspection Agency by stating, “Canadians have one of the best food inspection systems in the world”.

I must say that, as the official opposition critic for agriculture and agri-food, I echo the minister's comments in this regard. The fact that Canada's food supply is safe makes the closing of the U.S. and Japanese borders to the trade of Canadian livestock all the more frustrating since we all know that the U.S. and Japanese border closures had more to do with opportunism than fact and sound science.

That being said, we in the official opposition are heartened by the U.S. president's recent commitment to do all that he can to expedite the rule making process in order to resume trade of Canadian livestock. We are committed to working with the Canadian government and our U.S. counterparts to help ensure that this border is reopened just as soon as possible.

The minister claims that Bill C-27 would address a number of inconsistencies in existing enforcement and inspection legislation. He also claims that Bill C-27 is intended to provide the CFIA with new enforcement and inspection tools, similar to border enforcement provisions introduced by our major trading partner, the United States.

While the goals of the legislation are laudable, we in the official opposition have several concerns with the current legislation.

First, the Conservative Party of Canada generally supports a less intrusive approach to regulatory policy in Canada. For far too long, agriculture and agri-food producers in this country have had to deal with an ever increasing number of regulations imposed by various levels of government, creating unnecessary stress and burdens on Canadian producers.

Granting the CFIA authority to make regulations dealing with mandatory record keeping, food quality and safety programs could result in regulations being created without adequate consideration for the implications felt from these by the agriculture and agri-food industries.

In this respect, we are concerned that the key agriculture and agri-food stakeholders impacted by this legislation have not been adequately consulted in preparation of this bill.

While the minister claims that consultations have taken place in the development of Bill C-27, we do remain skeptical as to the degree of this consultation.

During a briefing my office received from the CFIA officials, I took the opportunity to ask them precisely which stakeholders had been consulted in this process. The best they could do was assure me that consultations did in fact take place. However they failed to specify with whom they had consulted.

Just yesterday my office was informed that neither the Canadian Federation of Agriculture nor its key stakeholder members had been consulted in any way in the development of this proposed legislation.

To come up with legislation that can have such a large impact on agriculture and agri-food producers without consulting them in the process is indicative of this government's approach to agriculture policy. That is a top down approach with a certain disregard, if not outright contempt, for Canadian agricultural producers.

We trust that the government will ensure that agricultural and agri-food processes are truly consulted in a responsible, open and transparent manner.

We in the Conservative Party will be pushing for these consultations to take place when this bill is referred to the agriculture committee and we will do all that we can to ensure that the concerns of agricultural producers are heard and acted on accordingly.

Although the legislation is a step in the right direction, it is unfortunate that the government took so very long to provide food inspection and enforcement officers with the necessary tools to do the job to the best of their ability.

I find it hard to believe that since the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's inception in 1997 the Liberal government waited seven whole years to make the CFIA fully operational. This delay and inaction from the Liberal government has presented the CFIA from doing the job it needs to do when responding to emergency situations affecting Canada's food supply.

The CFIA's inability to deal effectively in a crisis recently came to light in a troubling internal review of the CFIA's handling of the BSE crisis. This internal review, made public by the Vancouver Sun through access to information, underscores some very worrisome findings.

It stated that the Liberal government's response to the mad cow crisis was plagued by poor planning, staffing problems and repeated failures to share information. Furthermore, it highlighted several gaping holes in the CFIA's ability to deal with future emergencies, such as a possible outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease or a repeat of avian flu.

The review, completed for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on December 10, 2003, by an outside consultant, warned that if the CFIA did not take steps to fix some of the problems identified, they “could undermine CFIA's ability to respond to more complex or time-critical emergencies”, raising questions about the agency's handling of last spring's avian flu outbreak in the Fraser Valley.

It came to our attention that this review, entitled “CFIA BSE Emergency Response Assessment Report”, was actually written several months after the cow infected with BSE was discovered in Alberta, but before an Alberta-born cow with BSE was discovered in Washington state in late December.

In fairness, the assessment concluded that in general the CFIA's response to the BSE crisis was a success, but there were many areas of concern, including the following.

While the CFIA had declared an agency-wide emergency to respond to the BSE crisis, it did a poor job of communicating that, even to its own staff. As a result, several months after the crisis, many of the staff believed that an emergency had not even been declared.

Another concern included the finding that the CFIA's chief veterinary officer was designated as the agency spokesman on BSE, despite a standing policy not to assign spokesperson's duties to someone with critical responsibilities. “As a result,” the report says, “some key activities were not taken or were not completed on time”.

In addition, another finding showed that the start-up of an emergency operation centre in Ottawa to handle the BSE crisis was delayed, leading to confusion in procedures for obtaining decisions and in communicating decisions to those who needed them.

There was no plan in place to provide backup staffing. “Primary response participants were exhausted by the end of the response period and a longer response could not have been sustained with the same staff,” the report states.

In general, the report concluded, problems with communications and information sharing meant that “time that should have been spent focusing on the emergency response was spent on developing communications procedures and tools instead”.

The report makes 23 recommendations, including upgrading emergency operations facilities and rotating emergency response staff.

In light of the CFIA's refusal to say how many of the recommendations of the review were acted upon, I have called upon the Minister of Agriculture to publicly state what steps he has taken to address the numerous concerns outlined in this review. To this day I have had absolutely no response from the minister's office.

The safety of Canada's food supply demands the minister's prompt and decisive action in this regard, so I ask the minister again to stop hiding behind this internal review and publicly state what steps he has taken to address the many concerns outlined in this critical report.

With regard to Bill C-27, the CFIA has stated that this bill will enhance consumer protection by addressing new and emerging threats to the safety and security of human, animal and plant health.

It is important to note that this bill fails to ensure necessary protection for our Canadian livestock producers facing potential new and emerging threats. While we can all agree that consumer protection is essential, we must not forget the threats that face the farm.

This Liberal government currently has no concrete action plan--

Agriculture November 25th, 2004

Mr. Speaker, it is always the same old tune. In the meantime Quebec farmers have to sell off their livestock to a virtual monopoly. They are fed up with these dirty tricks.

Why else would the minister be so slow to react if not to protect the Levinoff and Colbex group, which contributed $44,000 to the Liberal coffers?

Agriculture November 25th, 2004

Mr. Speaker, an internal review by the CFIA states that the Liberal government's response to the mad cow crisis was plagued by poor planning, staffing problems and repeated failures to share information. The agriculture minister must immediately come clean and publicly state what steps he has taken to address the many concerns outlined in this review.

Could the minister explain his department's incompetence in the face of one of our country's largest crises?

Supply November 25th, 2004

Mr. Speaker, I think there is always every opportunity for progress if we do work together. Unholy alliances are merely names that are given to things. In fact, much of this country has been built through alliances that have benefited the entire country.

Supply November 25th, 2004

Mr. Speaker, without a doubt any time there is disruption it is the cause of great problems for the farm family. Lives are upset and new sources of income have to be found. If in fact they get to keep part of their land, often it is disrupted by roads going through it which prevents the efficient operation of a farm.

It is really a shame that this had to be done. Twelve thousand people's lives were disrupted and for what? So that the government could use less than 5% of the land that was expropriated. It is totally unacceptable that so many families had to suffer.

Supply November 25th, 2004

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Nepean--Carleton.

Before I address the substance of the Conservative motion that we are debating in the House today, as the agriculture and agri-food critic for the official opposition, I would like to take this opportunity to honour the men and women of this country who, day after day, work tirelessly to produce and process the food that we eat.

The value of the work of these men and women not only often gets ignored, but to add insult to injury, over the last few decades numerous levels of government have made life for producers on the farm more and more difficult. Whether it be through burdensome regulations, misguided legislation, flawed assistance programs, or simply being completely ignored in times of crisis, Canadian producers and farm families have suffered greatly at the hands of the Liberal government.

In spite of the Liberal government's legacy of disrespect for the agriculture community, Canadian producers and processors continue to produce the world's greatest and safest food supply.

In spite of being largely ignored during the current BSE crisis, cattle and livestock producers continue to press on with a resilience and a determination to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In my riding alone, many producers with whom I have spoken and visited have conveyed to me their increasing frustration with the bureaucratic and regulatory nonsense that they have to endure at the hands of the Liberal government's gross mismanagement of the agricultural file.

Agricultural producers have a unique and demonstrable relationship with the lands they own and farm. For many farmers the lands that they own have been passed on to them by their ancestors, dating back several generations. This passing on of the family farm from generation to generation has long been the reality for many farm families. Unfortunately, due to the lack of support and respect that the Liberal government affords to Canadian farm families, the dream of passing on the family farm to the next generation is fading for all too many Canadian farm families.

To have this dream shattered by government mismanagement and poor public policy is a wrong that needs to be addressed by the Liberal government. Canadian farm families deserve respect from all levels of government. Rural issues continue to be ignored by the Liberal government. My constituents are tired of hearing of the Liberal urban agenda and gas tax for cities. They demand better from their government.

My constituents demand a government that will be responsive to, and dare I say this, the rural agenda. It is this lack of attention to rural Canadians that has led to the increasing polarization of rural and urban Canada. That is a shame.

To address the subject of our motion today, a prime example of Liberal mismanagement and disrespect of the agriculture community is evidenced by the situation that Quebec farmers had to face when their farmlands were expropriated by the Liberal government for Mirabel.

Before I go on, I find it highly ironic that Mirabel airport was in large part the baby of the former prime minister, the right hon. Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In spite of this, it is the height of irony that the other airport in Montreal currently bears his name. Perhaps this was the Liberal Party's attempt to hide the legacy of the former prime minister who gave birth to the Mirabel white elephant, but I digress.

There is a common principle of justice in this country. It is called making amends for past wrongs. For example, the Liberal government recognizes the need to right past wrongs that the federal government has unjustly imposed upon Canada's aboriginal peoples. In so doing, the government is doing the right thing.

With regard to the injustices suffered by Canadian hepatitis C victims at the hands of the Liberals, the government recently agreed to compensate them. In this regard, I would like to commend my hon. colleagues in the Conservative Party who have been unrelenting in their pursuit of justice for those hepatitis C victims. Principally, I would like to commend our health critic, the member for Charleswood--St. James--Assiniboia; the Conservative member for Yellowhead; and the former member for Macleod, Dr. Grant Hill, for their tireless work for justice in this regard.

The Liberal government's capitulation on the hepatitis C compensation issue was the right thing to do. We in the Conservative Party applaud the government for its recent actions in this regard, however overdue its response may have been. Nonetheless, the Liberals continue to stall on other files where they so clearly made poor policy and poor management decisions.

It is no secret that the Liberals told Canadians to trust them with the gun registry. They said it would only cost taxpayers $2 million. We know that the Liberals were never good at math and that their projections for the total cost of the gun registry were off the mark by only a couple of billion dollars.

The Liberals should be ashamed for having treated the public purse with such disregard and disrespect. On behalf of my constituents, I demand that the Liberal government acknowledge its complete and utter mismanagement of the gun registry, do the right thing, and scrap it altogether.

Turning to the matter that we are debating in the House today, the incredible sense of attachment and belonging to the land that farmers feel is precisely what makes what happened at Mirabel such a disgrace. To have displaced 3,200 farm families from their land to the tune of 97,000 acres, an area equivalent to two-thirds of the city of Montreal, is beyond comprehension.

This mass expropriation displaced almost 12,000 people. Much of this displacement occurred through force. Many houses were torn down, stores were displaced and families were thrown out. The Department of Transport virtually wiped out the economic life of 10 villages. Former owners were asked to lease their own heritage for indeterminate periods.

To highlight the complete and utter mismanagement of the Liberals on this file, of the 97,000 acres expropriated for the purposes of the airport, Mirabel never used more than 5,000 acres for its airport operations. That is less than 5% of the total area expropriated.

It was not until a Conservative government was in power that the wrongs inflicted by the Liberal government on these farm families were largely addressed. In the 1980s, 80,000 acres of the original 97,000 acres were ceded back to their original owners. This was thanks in large part to the hard work of Conservative MP Lise Bourgault and the support of the then minister of public works, Roch LaSalle.

We are again caught in a situation that proves once again how poorly the Liberals manage public funds. Mirabel airport is a white elephant, a monument to Liberal arrogance, waste and mismanagement.

The farming families living in the area want to turn the page and go back to a normal life. It is high time the Liberal government take responsibility for this white elephant and apologize to the families that were so badly treated throughout this entire matter.

So unless the Liberal government can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is necessary to keep the 11,000 acres of unused land in Mirabel, it should give them back to the farmers.

On this side of the House, we understand the suffering of these people and we feel for them. I hope that the Liberal government will recognize its wrongdoing, take responsibility and make amends.

Agriculture and Agri-Food November 24th, 2004

Mr. Speaker, day after day, the minister repeats the same refrain. The dairy producers of Quebec have had enough of being held hostage by a single slaughterhouse. They are forced to sell their animals at terrible prices to a virtual monopoly.

Is the minister dragging his feet in this file in order to protect the interests of the Colbex-Levinoff group, because they contributed $45,000 to Liberal coffers?