Garry Breitkreuz

[Agriculture, May 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, how can we expect the people who provide us with top quality food to live on less than $7,000? That is what the average Saskatchewan farmer earned last year.

Today's headlines show how dismal the government's efforts are in addressing the farm income prices. The Free Press headline blared “Farm income falls for third year”.

Input costs like the costs of fuel and fertilizer are rising every day, making the picture even darker. Keystone Agricultural Producers predicted that eventually farmers would quit. They need to get a return or they cannot stay in business.

These numbers hide the real hardships farm families are going through. Last week a government minister told prairie farmers to start growing potatoes. Two weeks earlier another government minister told P.E.I. farmers to quit growing potatoes.

My question is for the Prime Minister. When can farmers expect the government to take some real action on the farm income crisis and not give out conflicting advice from confused ministers? Does he think $7,000 per year is enough to live on?

[Division No. 98, May 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in the House on February 20 I tried to get the Minister of Justice to address the injustice of having three and a half million citizens in an RCMP databank called FIP or Firearms Interest Police. All three and a half million are, without their knowledge or consent, in direct contravention of the Privacy Act of Canada, an act for which the minister herself is responsible.

Sources in the RCMP and the Sûreté du Québec confirm that there is a 50% error rate in the FIP databank. Sources in the Sûreté du Québec advise us that municipal and city police forces do not follow section 5 of the Firearms Act when loading personal information into the FIP.

The Sûreté du Québec has advised us that it took one investigator eight hours to clear the name of one improperly red flagged individual. Is this the culture of safety the minister envisioned with her billion dollar error riddled gun registration scheme?

The minister brags that potentially dangerous individuals have been blocked from buying guns or have had their firearms licences refused or revoked. How could she brag about a so-called success when the same thing could have been done 20 years ago with the FAC program? How could she call the FIP a success when it is based on information that is wrong 50% of the time?

The Minister of Justice says she is fully accountable and responsible. However she looks the other way when the personal information of three and a half million Canadians is loaded into an RCMP databank that contravenes all seven privacy rights guaranteed in the Privacy Act.

On February 16 the Privacy Commissioner of Canada wrote me a three page letter outlining his concerns about the RCMP's Firearms Interest Police database. Here are the key concerns Mr. Radwanski described in his letter.

First, the FIP database contains names of individuals that should not have been entered and even “contains the names of witnesses and victims”. Second, the police information and the FIP leads to investigations based on “unsubstantiated, hearsay and incorrect information”. Third, the police loaded incidents in the FIP not relevant to section 5 of the Firearms Act. Fourth, the police are conducting unnecessary investigations because the FIP file contains information on “cases where the charges have been dropped and the individuals have been acquitted”. Fifth, he said that there is no process in place to ensure that “improper or duplicate entries in the FIP files are removed or corrected”.

The last point that I would like to raise, and these are not exhaustive, is that the way the FIP database is set up makes it “extraordinarily difficult for individuals to exercise their access and correction rights”.

The government told Canadians that they have nothing to worry about if they have done nothing wrong. The privacy commissioner's letter proves that everyone has something to worry about, especially the three and a half million citizens in the RCMP's FIP file. When police are kept busy chasing down incorrect and unreliable information in this police database, it is possible for some criminals and truly violent individuals to escape detection.

My question is this: when will the minister implement the privacy commissioner's recommendations and fix this mess?

[Patent Act, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in the House on February 12 the Minister of Justice and the Deputy Prime Minister denied that the government was privatizing the gun registry.

Then in a media scrum outside the House the minister said she was outsourcing, not privatizing the gun registry. Since that time she has been unable to successfully describe to anyone's satisfaction the difference between privatizing and outsourcing.

On March 3 the Moncton Times and Transcript reported that a crowd of 700 demonstrators protested in Miramichi because they were upset over reports that the Canadian Firearms Centre would be privatized.

In the same newspaper on April 24 it was reported that 70 employees were to be laid off on May 6. The article stated:

However the union believes the federal government plans to privatize the entire licensing and registration system, taking all the workers off the federal payroll and with no guarantees a private company would hire any of them.

On February 27 the Edmonton Sun reported that the RCMP were laying off 130 civilians working the national gun registry. Lynn Ray, president of the Union of Solicitor General Employees, said the layoffs and transfer of another 130 employees from the RCMP to the Department of Justice was the first step toward privatizing the registry.

The National Post ran a front page story on March 1 which stated:

In a document that seems to contradict assurances by...the Minister of Justice, that only parts of the registry and licensing functions would be outsourced, Public Works Canada has assured 12 prospective bidders that the successful contractor would conduct “all transactions with clients except certain investigations”

“More specifically, we mean that the vendor will own and operate the business process delivery component as identified in the letter of interest”—

On March 1 the Edmonton Sun printed comments by Edmonton city police Staff Sergeant Al Bohachyk. Bohachyk called the privatized gun registry a frightening prospect because:

—no private company could guarantee personal information in gun licence and registration databases won't get out to the wrong people, organized crime figures, for instance.

On February 16 I received a letter from Mr. George Radwanski, the privacy commissioner of Canada. The privacy commissioner confirmed that the justice department did not even consult with his office about its privatization initiative. In his letter he stated that he was deeply concerned that justice may privatize or outsource the Canadian firearms program. He intends to pursue the matter with the department. This is very serious.

On April 4 the Library of Parliament discovered that there were already seven private firearms officers working for the gun registry in New Brunswick. One of these privatized firearms officers even has his own private investigation firm in Fredericton. His appointment letter gives him the power to conduct investigations by reviewing police files and by conducting interviews with applicants, spouses, relatives, neighbours and employers.

This firearms officer, a private eye, told my office that he told a newspaper reporter he was doing firearms background checks because he thought it would be good for his business. How could he possibly keep the information he gathers as a private firearms officer separate from the information he uses to advance the interest of his own private investigation firm and his private clients? The privacy commissioner is investigating.

An April 20 headline in the Moncton Times and Transcript read “Gun registry privatization nears reality”. Union leaders call what the government is doing with the gun registry privatization. Every newspaper story written on the issue calls it privatization. Robert Klassen, professor of operations management at the University of Western Ontario, told the National Post that it sounded like privatization.

The documents provided by the Department of Justice to the private companies bidding on the job say the successful bidder will own and operate the business process and will conduct all transactions except certain investigations.

Why does the minister insist on calling it outsourcing? Why will the minister not admit in public that which everyone else knows and what she privately tells the private companies she is negotiating with?

[Canadian Wheat Board, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, 52% of voters in the election wanted freedom to market. Surely the minister knows that the Canadian Wheat Board cannot change the legislation. It can only apply the law as it is written, and the law prevents organic growers from developing the niche markets that will allow them to flourish.

Clearly the Canadian Wheat Board does not represent organic producers in western Canada. Nor is it marketing their product. Why is blindly protecting the power of the Canadian Wheat Board more important than the economic health of organic growers?

[Canadian Wheat Board, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board has no idea what is happening in western Canada. Nor does he know what is happening in his own portfolio.

Yesterday in question period he invited organic growers to apply for the freedom to market their own grain. They have repeatedly done this, only to be ignored by the minister. When will the minister introduce legislation that gives Canadian organic growers the right to process and market their own grain?

[Petitions, May 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have 14 petitions signed by residents of the province of Saskatchewan who are very concerned about the availability of liquid strychnine for the control of the Richardson's ground squirrel.

Before 1992 it was available in concentrated form. Since 1992 Health Canada has restricted this sale to a pre-mixed form with the concentration of 0.4%. That has had the resulting effect of this particular ground squirrel destroying crops and hay land causing severe damage. It is very costly to farmers in lost productivity, equipment repairs and injury to livestock.

They are petitioning parliament to amend the relevant regulations so as to permit the sale of concentrated liquid strychnine to registered farmers until such time as an effective alternative can be found.

[Access To Information Act, May 2nd, 2001]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-341, an act to amend the Access to Information Act (Cabinet confidences).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Delta—South Richmond for seconding my bill to amend the cabinet confidences section of the Access to Information Act.

Last week Treasury Board kept secret 33 full pages of documents and an additional 57 partial pages, using the excuse of cabinet confidences. All the documents pertain to a treasury board firearms oversight committee that had been reviewing the huge cost overruns and bureaucratic bungling of the gun registry.

The Department of Justice has used the same cabinet secrecy excuse repeatedly to hide 172 pages of gun registry budget documents, an entire 115 page document on the economic cost of the gun registry, and 61 pages on how user fees would cover the entire cost of the gun registry program.

In 1996 the information commissioner published a report entitled “Access to Information Act and Cabinet Confidences, A Discussion of New Approaches”.

My private member's bill would implement the information commissioner's recommendations, and that is very important. The information commissioner was kind enough to review an earlier version of my bill and his recommendations have been included in this draft. The bill should reduce some of the complaints of government secrecy which the information commissioner says have more than doubled in the last year.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Modernization Of The Standing Orders Of The House Of Commons, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I listened carefully to what the hon. member said and I agree with much of it.

I want to be a bit of a devil's advocate. The member talked about how we try to find scandals on the other side and the opposition is made to look like they do not know what they are talking about, et cetera. How much value does he perceive there is in question period?

Does the member think that question period meets a need that is somehow fulfilled in what is played out here every day? I have found some question periods to be valuable, but if we abolished question period would there be a great loss to the country? Is question period just a very easy way for the media to get something for its time slot every evening or is there a meaningful role to be played by question period?

I sense that question period is what you were referring to when you talked about the opposition looking for scandals in government and that the government was trying to make the opposition look like it did not know what it is talking about. What does the member honestly feel about question period?

[Modernization Of The Standing Orders Of The House Of Commons, May 1st, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I want to correct my colleague from Mississauga South on three points he made in his brief intervention a moment ago.

First, his mathematics are not quite up to snuff here. He said that we would not be able to have all members have a bill made votable in the life of a parliament.

If a parliament is approximately 600 days in total, although it may be only 500 days, but if we do sit 150 days for four years that is 600 days. If there were 300 members and we had two hours a day devoted to private members' business, which is something I would like to see, every member would get his or her bill made votable if we had two hours of debate. That was one of the options put forward in a questionnaire.

If we were to limit the debate to two hours per bill or motion, which I think is reasonable, each member could have one bill or one motion made votable during the life of one parliament. It is possible. To simply dismiss that as impossible is not right.

The second thing I would like to correct is that labelling a motion as having the same weight as a bill is not quite accurate. Using the example of the labelling of alcohol containers that we voted on is a prime example of how a motion is not the same as a bill. I could support that motion but I could never have supported a bill. The motion was very fuzzy. It just wanted to examine the issue, and yes, of course I could examine the issue. A bill would have been more definite.

The third thing he mentioned is that he would like to have all MPs speak from the heart and not use notes. The way parliament is structured, if I have a 10 minute speech and a lot of points to make I do not have time to make it up. I need to get all my points in very quickly and I need them to be tightly structured. Because of the way the system is set up we often are forced to go to notes. I am not using notes tonight. It is easy to say that we should not use notes but it is more difficult to practice under the constraints of parliament if one has a lot to say.

Let me get into the remarks I wanted to make. For those who are watching on television, this is a take note debate which is very different from the normal debates that take place in parliament. I appreciate the government allowing us an opportunity to talk about the standing orders that govern the House. For the people who are watching and do not know what the standing orders are, they are the rules that we play by in parliament. They are the rules that govern us. In essence, they govern how democracy unfolds at this level in parliament.

I appreciate the opportunity to make some brief remarks on a couple of select issues. I could go off on all kinds of things and it does not mean I do not have an opinion on them, but we have to make some changes here. Unless we change the system we will not change much else in the country.

I spoke at a high school this afternoon, about a 20 minute drive out of Ottawa. One of the things the students gave back to me as I spoke about what goes on in this place is that they do not see much meaningful activity happening here. I do not think those students are at all out of touch with what is going on. In fact, I get that across the country.

That is a very sad commentary on what happens here. If we are in fact the highest court in the land and we are making the laws by which all Canadians have to play, the laws that govern the country and set the tone for what we feel is right and wrong, we need to be perceived as having open debate and that Canadians have input into what we do here. They need to feel that this is a meaningful activity and that through their member of parliament they have a voice in what is happening in parliament.

The cynicism that is developing across the country about the political process is becoming so ingrained that if we do not start making some changes here, it will be very difficult to turn that around.

What is one change we could make? We could make private members' business votable and make any consequential changes that may be required in order to do that. I feel very strongly that if we were to make that simple change and allow members to have a free vote on that, it would begin to change the way parliament is perceived across the country. It would give us a lot more credibility as we participate in things. That seemingly small change could send a ripple effect through the entire Chamber that would begin to go out across the country.

The students I spoke to this afternoon asked me what they could do. They said they felt helpless in influencing things that happen in the country. They felt their voices were not being heard. They felt they could not meaningfully participate in the debate.

If we made private members' business votable, I do not believe that debate would take place for only two hours. As an issue is raised and over the three or six months the issue is before parliament people across the country would begin to debate it. That is the problem as I perceive it.

The problem is not just in parliament. The problem is that people do not debate things across the country. They do not take an interest in what happens in Canada. People do not feel they have to scratch beneath the surface on issues because somebody else will do it for them.

We have to give people a voice. We need committees that travel and do meaningful work. MPs have to tell people that a certain issue would be coming up in parliament and ask them what they think about it. That would begin to send out the message that MPs are playing a very meaningful role in representing their constituents. This could happen through private members' business. It could reinvigorate this place like nothing else I know. It would begin to make MPs feel a lot more meaningful in what they do.

A lot of MPs feel alienated in that they do not have a lot of roles to play in what is going on in this place. By making private members' business votable, many things would happen as a result.

Private members' business would probably be debated more than some of the government legislation in the House. We would begin to have conversations in parliament, behind the scenes and across the country on issues that really matter to Canadians. The lack of respect for parliament that has begun to creep in would be reversed. That would be a very healthy thing. The more we could make people feel that they are part of the process and that they have control over issues that govern them, the more they would take an interest in the affairs of the country.

At election time we can create an impression and get votes. However we have to be sure that when people vote they vote on meaningful issues that really affect their lives. I speak from somebody who has gone through three elections now when I say that is something that needs to happen in Canada.

I do not wish to belabour these points. I could elaborate on every one of them. We have to make sure that people across Canada have the feeling that they have meaningful input into the process that is used in this place to govern them. One of those things would be to reinvigorate private members' business.

As deputy whip I happen to sit on the committee, so I have been able to give this a little more thought than most members. I feel very strongly that this is something we need to do. I would suggest increasing the time for private members' business as well. If it is possible to have it for two hours a day or an equivalent amount on a Friday or a Monday, we should try and fit that in. It would be a very healthy thing to do.

I mentioned that this might divert attention away from government business. I do not know if that is a positive or a negative. The government might view it as a positive, not having all the focus on its legislation, but it could also be very negative because what it introduces is very important legislation. We need to have that considered and looked at.

All the problems we have will not be solved by that. I am not naive enough to believe that, but it would be a step in the right direction. I urge the government to work on that and maybe some of my colleagues would like to ask me some questions about it.

The media tend to focus on leadership and on issues that really are not all that significant in the grand scheme of things when they report things on the evening news. This is another problem we also have. By making private members' business votable and by beginning to focus more on issues, we would get away from some of the extraneous stuff that often occupies a lot of media attention. That is true of every political party. That is not a partisan issue. It would be healthy to get issues discussed rather than personalities and scandals.

I can see a lot of good spinoff benefits from this. I want to put that on the record. If anybody has any comments, I would appreciate hearing from them.

[Farm Credit Corporation Act, April 30th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to address an issue of great importance to my constituents. I will be raising questions that the government must answer before we can continue the debate. I look forward to hearing the answers which will, hopefully, be forthcoming.

For those watching on television, I will outline what we are debating today. Bill C-25 is an act to amend the Farm Credit Corporation Act and make consequential amendments to other acts that affect this area.

The purpose of the bill, as outlined by the government, is to modify the role of the Farm Credit Corporation. The bill proposes changes to three key areas.

The lending role of the FCC would be expanded to allow it to lend to businesses which are not directly involved in primary agricultural production and in which farmers are not necessarily the majority shareholders.

The lending role of the FCC would also be expanded to allow it to provide equity financing. This could be accomplished by allowing the FCC to hold non-fixed assets, for example cattle or other things, as collateral. Bill C-25 would formalize the FCC's leasing ability which could include farm land.

This is of primary importance to the people of Saskatchewan. I looked at some of the figures put out by the Farm Credit Corporation. Saskatchewan alone has $1.3 billion in loans. That is second only to Ontario, which has $2.1 billion. The other provinces fall in line. Alberta and Quebec are next with a little under $1 billion in assets in the portfolio.

Because that is of such critical importance to the people of Saskatchewan, and with the farm crisis we are currently experiencing, it is important that the government handle the issue very carefully. We need to ensure that primary producers, farmers of Saskatchewan, are properly protected and that we do not move away from properly serving them through the Farm Credit Corporation.

The bill before us would expand the focus of the Farm Credit Corporation past its original mandate of providing financial services only to family farms and businesses directly related to primary production. We need to ask whether the Farm Credit Corporation's involvement should go beyond direct farming operations and, if so, how primary producers would be protected.

My colleague from B.C. who is sitting beside me would ask the same question in relation to things that go on in B.C. People in the Maritimes would also like to know how they would be protected. They would like to know if the focus of the FCC would continue to be on farmers and their needs.

If we extended the FCC's lending abilities beyond primary production the bill would bring the Farm Credit Corporation into direct competition with private lending institutions and make it overlap with other government institutions such as the Business Development Bank.

In the little town I come from there is a credit union that was established many years ago to serve the clientele in that area. It is a co-operative of sorts. I need to know if the FCC will directly compete with organizations which were established to serve local people and which have done an excellent job of doing so. Sometimes a good thing can undermine one that is even better. We need to ensure that does not happen.

There is tremendous openness for interpretation in some of the bill's clauses. I will read a section from the bill:

The purpose of the Corporation is to enhance rural Canada by providing specialized and personalized business and financial services and products to farming operations, including family farms, and to those businesses in rural Canada, including small and medium-sized businesses, that are businesses related to farming. The primary focus of the activities of the Corporation shall be on farming operations, including family farms.

It sounds wonderful. It sounds good. It is an intention that we could never disagree with, but years down the road how will it be interpreted? What will a business related to farming include? What will it consist of?

Unless we have an assurance that somehow primary producers, farmers, will be protected, we would have difficulty supporting this idea. The idea is great, but we need to know what will happen and how it will be interpreted in the future.

We also note Bill C-25 that we are discussing will formalize the FCC's ability to own and lease land. The FCC has stated that this is not the intent of the amendment. It claims that the leasing provisions are for equipment. However, again the legislation does not make this clear. It can give the government the mandate to make changes behind the scenes, to slip in changes that would affect agriculture very adversely. It is not like other legislation that is often brought before the House. It is enabling legislation.

Through the administration of the bill many changes can be made that were not anticipated when the bill was debated in the House of Commons and often received the support of many members. We need to know if this will give the FCC the ability to begin to own land, possibly for long periods of time, without any limit as to how long it can hang on to the land.

Will this inflate the price of land and cause hardship for many farmers who right now have a difficult time competing with those who are not directly involved in agriculture? We need to know if that will be the case. We do not see any limitations within the bill that address some of these concerns. Will the FCC be allowed to permanently hold and lease land that could result in the market value of farmland increasing and hurting primary producers?

Those may not sound like major concerns at this point but years down the road, once the legislation comes into full effect, it could hurt the people involved across Canada. Allowing the FCC to permanently hold and lease land may provide that corporation with the incentive not to pursue every other possible means to allow farmers who are experiencing financial difficulty to stay on the land. In short, the bill could provide the FCC with the incentive to prematurely foreclose on Canadian farmland.

Will the FCC continue to look at its mandate to help farmers or will it become more involved in ensuring that the corporation is financially successful? That could have a very negative effect. We need to have the assurance and the proper amendments need to be made so that farmers have the guarantee that it will not move away from its mandate.

I read the clause in the bill which can be interpreted in many other ways. We would agree that businesses in rural Canada, including small and medium size businesses and businesses related to farming, should get the help they need, but how far away from farming does a business have to be before one begins to say it is not really related to farming?

Will the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool be eligible for loans under the legislation? I would like to know. I do not know. We are asking some tough questions that need answers.

Under the current legislation, the FCC will become a significant landowner. In 2000 the FCC owned over 360,000 acres. Guess where most of that farmland was owned? Some 95% of it was in the province of Saskatchewan, the province that is experiencing the most difficulty right now in the farm crisis. Not to belittle the problems that farmers are having in Manitoba, Alberta and across the country, but this is having a major impact because of the dependence on grain and oilseed crops in the province.

While it is impossible for the FCC to avoid holding land for short periods of time, the act should somehow explicitly state that the FCC would divest itself of any holdings as quickly as possible.

Bill C-25 also extends the FCC's lending ability into the area of equity financing. This would be done by allowing the FCC to hold non-fixed assets such as cattle as collateral for loans. This change would allow the FCC to provide farm financing to primary producers who are not eligible under current legislation. In many cases this would provide financing that would not be available from private lenders. This is a very positive change to the legislation. The funding that would often be limited to primary producers would no longer be available.

In the Canadian Alliance policy we state very clearly that we will foster a healthy economic environment for the benefit of consumers by pursuing free and open trade at home and abroad, including the elimination of interprovincial trade barriers.

We will withdraw government from areas of the economy where the private sector could deliver the same services more efficiently. We will end the unfair practice of providing subsidies to industries, businesses and special interest groups.

We do not want the government to compete with areas in the private sector that are providing a good service and possibly undermine that service. That is what we are saying in our policy and we stand by that.

We will withdraw from areas in the economy where the private sector could deliver the same services more efficiently. I already pointed out that they might be competing with another institution, namely the Business Development Bank.

Will Bill C-25 take away the primary focus of the FCC from providing credit to primary producers? If that were to happen, we as Canadian Alliance members of parliament believe that this would be a shift in the wrong direction. This would be a move away from where we should be moving.

The FCC should not be providing funding for non-farming operations if it hurts farmers and primary producers. Lending institutions are already in that area, for example the Business Development Bank of Canada.

We in the Alliance Party do not want the Farm Credit Corporation under Bill C-25 to go into direct competition with private sector lenders. That would be wrong and that would get the government involved in areas that it should not be involved in. That is a basic policy area of the Canadian Alliance.

The bill formalizes a lot of the FCC's leasing ability. We have to be very careful. Short term ownership of land is unavoidable in some cases, but the FCC should not go into the business of owning farmland in the long term. It could inflate the price of land and hurt the whole agricultural sector. This might make it more difficult for farmers and for primary producers to get credit where they normally would be able to access that credit.

I have a couple of other questions, but the key question still needs to be asked and has to be answered by the government. Does the bill ensure that farmers will be properly served? Will farmers have to compete for capital now that they normally did not have to compete for before?

I need to mention something else. Will Canadian taxpayers be on the hook for loans that would not normally have been made but would be made and in turn be a higher risk loan? Would taxpayers be on the hook for any bad decisions made?

I mentioned about this being enabling legislation, enabling the government to do things behind the scenes that it would not openly do. I am noted for following the Firearms Act issue. One thing I have found through that piece of enabling legislation is that the government has brought forward many things it originally said was not its intention, such as private police and enforcement agencies. The kinds of things we were assured would not happen are in fact happening.

What does that have to do with this legislation? Will this bill be an open book for the government to bring in government policy through the back door that may hurt farmers but may not be directly visible at this time? We need to have that kind of protection. Are the changes here in the best interest of farmers?

Will adequate provisions be made in Bill C-25 that would prevent the FCC from bailing out large, non-farmer owned businesses at a future date? I do not see that protection right now. Large corporations could possibly access capital for a bailout that would hurt farmers directly. A large agribusiness, possibly even a multinational agribusiness, could access the money unless there are proper provisions put in place that this would not happen.

If we read the legislation it sounds good, but it could be interpreted years down the road in a very different manner than we are expected to interpret it at this point. Would a limit be set on the size of loans offered to businesses that are not majority owned by farmers? We need to have that protection put in the bill.

Would a farm equipment dealer be able to access the resources of the Farm Credit Corporation? Could these businesses access capital through other lending institutions? We do not know what checks and balances will be provided to ensure that certain companies will not be able to access the capital, which would then remove that capital base or pool of capital from primary producers.

All these things need to be addressed. I should like to hear some of these questions answered by the government. I see that my time is up. I have asked what I think are the key questions farmers in my riding are asking. I would like the government to answer those questions today.