Diane Finley

[The Budget, February 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as the agriculture and agrifood critic for the official opposition, I am honoured to have this opportunity to speak on behalf of producers and farm families across the country, and to respond to the government's 2005 budget.

I am frankly quite dismayed at the continued lack of respect and attention that agricultural producers and hard-working families have received in the 2005 budget. Farmers will get no more cash in their pockets this year from the budget's agricultural programs, or should I say the lack thereof.

Despite Agriculture Canada's forecasts of another year of negative total net income, there are no additional funds for producer income support this year. The $26 million a year in cash advances for livestock producers that was promised is a mere drop in the ocean and it will not even kick in until next year if at all.

The budget has almost $100 million in recycled and reannounced promises. What is even worse is that the money is not even for farmers but for industry. This is money that was not delivered as promised. It is recycled. It is redirected, to use the government's own words. The $80 million of it will now go to managing the removal of specified risk materials and to handling those issues, and $17 million will go to the fabled loan loss reserve program.

I have to wonder which of the government's September promises are not being kept and at whose expense. To highlight the government's lip service to the agricultural community we have recently learned that the agriculture minister's often bragged about $66 million loan loss reserve program is a sham. It does not exist.

The program announced on September 10 of last year was supposed to help stimulate additional slaughterhouse capacity in the country, slaughter capacity that is most desperately needed.

Members of the Canadian Bankers Association testified before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food this week that for all intents and purposes the program does not exist. The admission that the program is non-existent is frankly stunning. It is also an insult to livestock producers so desperately impacted by the BSE crisis.

Yesterday the Minister of Finance announced that $17 million is to be redirected to this non-existent program. The minister is simply offering would-be slaughterhouse investors the sleeves off his vest.

It should be noted that this unprecedented situation has devastated not only cattle farmers but other livestock producers as well. In the absence of any real action from the federal government, all four western provinces have developed a BSE program to compensate producers of elk, deer, bison, sheep and goats.

Other ruminant and cervid producers left high and dry by the minister have demanded and continue to demand action from the government. The 2005 budget would have been an ideal opportunity for the government to show that it has heard the calls of the other ruminant producers. However, their calls once again have fallen on deaf years.

On this occasion, I would like to take this opportunity to ask the agriculture minister this question. When will he ante up and kick in the federal portion of funding for these other ruminant programs already committed to by the western provinces?

With regard to the Canadian agricultural income stabilization or CAIS program, the Liberals seem to be taking a Jekyll and Hyde approach. Just two weeks ago the Liberals voted against our motion to drop the CAIS cash deposit requirement.

The member for Winnipeg South voted against it, as did the Prime Minister, the finance minister, the agriculture minister and his parliamentary secretary. Now in a complete about face they say that they want to get rid of it.

It was the Conservative Party that brought forward the motion. It was the Conservative Party that was pushing for it. The Liberals are now trying to take credit for something that they actually voted against just two weeks ago. We hope they mean that they want to get rid of it this time and we hope, for the sake of our farmers, that they will do something about it and do it soon.

The same day they voted against removing the cash deposit requirement, the same Liberals voted against honouring the commitment they had already made to our agricultural producers. So pardon me if I cynically say that I will believe it when I see it. After all, the Liberals committed $71 million in relief to the tobacco farmers of my area, guaranteed to be delivered by October last year. So far they have failed to honour this commitment as well, so my cynicism is well learned.

With regard to total new funding for agriculture, the budget offers a paltry $130 million. This new money is not for producers either; it is for bureaucrats and consultants. It will not give any farmer the money that many desperately need just to plant this spring. This is shameful. At a time when farmers' realized net income is at an all time low, the government is sending a clear message to producers right across this country that farmers do not matter to this Liberal government. The minister himself confirmed this earlier today when he said that he does not always get what he wants at the cabinet table.

What was desperately needed in the budget was: tax deferrals on 2004 income for producers hit by drought, crashing commodity prices and BSE; tax incentives to increase domestic beef and ruminant slaughter capacity; and the provision of direct loan underwriting for the development of increased slaughter capacity, not to mention crop insurance improvements.

In terms of providing real relief for hardworking families, the steps taken by the Liberals in the budget do not go far enough or occur fast enough to have a significant impact on the well-being of Canadians. The Liberals would rather grow the size of the government than grow the incomes of Canadians. The cost of the bureaucracy has grown 77% since 1997.

Yet, the Liberal tax relief promised in the budget will amount to just $16 this year for low and middle income Canadians. Furthermore, any additional tax relief is back loaded to 2010. This is an outrage. Hard-working families deserve a bigger break than these piddling measures that the Liberal government has promised.

The status quo is not acceptable. With various crisis situations affecting our farmers right across this country at this time, the Canadian agricultural community is in its worst financial position since the years of the Great Depression. Agriculture Canada's own forecast of negative total net income for yet another year confirmed this, but the Liberal budget ignores it. Once again the Liberals seem to be saying that our farmers should just wind down their farms, move into the city, and get real jobs, ones that will allow them to pay more income tax for the Liberal government to squander.

Our farmers deserve more respect than this. Clearly the Liberal government does not value the contributions of hard-working farm families. To put things in context, Ontario corn producers are currently getting less money per tonne for their corn than the city of Toronto is getting per tonne of garbage. That is right, corn is worth more after it has been used than before.

The government must change its priorities. Agriculture is a key economic driver of this country and the security of our food supply depends on farm families who work very hard to provide us with the high quality food that we eat.

Canadians across this country want a safe, secure food supply, and they deserve it. Our farmers want to supply it, but increasingly they are finding it impossible to do so. The government has a responsibility to ensure that farmers receive responsive relief in real time. They do not need phantom funds. They do not need deferred dollars and they do not need the sleeves off of the government's vest.

Farmers across this country need relief and they need it now. The budget has failed to provide it, and for that reason, I will not be supporting it.

[The Budget, February 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I come from a part of Ontario that is a short distance from where the hon. member lives, only about two hours away on the shores of Lake Erie in southern Ontario. It is a very rural riding.

In the budget, funds have been provided for economic development in the west, the far north, northern Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada. It seems that only southern Ontario does not get this funding.

With our farms disappearing, I am wondering how the member is proposing that we survive without our farms and without development money?

[Agriculture, February 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, what kind of help can Canadian producers expect from a government with a schizophrenic attitude toward the United States? There is no guarantee that the border will be reopened to our cattle. Once again, the Prime Minister is showing his inability to make a decision and stick to it.

Is the Prime Minister deliberately deciding to sacrifice our farmers, or is his government merely incompetent?

[Supply, February 3rd, 2005]

Madam Speaker, we recognize that the parliamentary secretary has not always been sure where he stands on these issues, and now we have seen it.

I am delighted to hear that both the minister and the parliamentary secretary acknowledge that the CAIS program is not working. This is good news. This is progress. At least they are starting to look at it. My concern is that they are going to look at it too long. We were supposed to have a mandated review of CAIS starting two months ago and it has not started yet. Looking at it is not going to fix it. We have to take action. Things have to be done. We have to get rid of the program.

My leader today described a program that we are recommending, one that is two tier, where we have not only a safety net program in terms of income support for the regular flux and flow of business, but also a disaster relief program. This does not exist at the present time. We have had too many crises in agriculture in the last few years where systems are needed but the plan is not there to deal with them. Who is left holding the empty money bag? It is our producers. This is unacceptable. The government is responsible for providing solutions.

[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?