Gerald Keddy

[Attack on the United States, September 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will use the two minutes left to draw attention, as the hon. member alluded to earlier, to fire departments, police departments and emergency personnel.

In the community of New Ross where I live there was recently a severe accident involving a fire truck. Four firefighters were seriously injured. One of those who was seriously injured, Lionel Russell, just got out of the hospital. That is the type of contribution that ordinary citizens and volunteer firefighters make to society and to Canada every day of their lives. They get up in the morning and do not know what to expect that day, but are willing to take on the unexpected if it is called upon. We take that too much for granted.

It is time we looked at ways to not only combat terrorism, which is what the debate is about, but to support our police officers and volunteer firefighters at home.

[Attack on the United States, September 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, sometimes it is not a bad thing to have a bit of laughter or the occasional less than sombre moment in a debate, but unfortunately this is a very solemn and sombre occasion.

I appreciate very much the comments of the member from Mississauga who just spoke, especially with regard to the way we treat police officers and firefighters. All emergency response personnel, whether ambulance drivers, firefighters, police officers or anyone who is a first responder, take upon themselves a job where they do not know what to expect when they get up in the morning. They volunteer to work diligently on our behalf and save lives if that may be, but they do not volunteer to lose their own.

Our hearts immediately go out to those groups and their families. However more importantly, now that we are left with the result of this horrific event, what will we as a parliament do about it?

My question to the member is whether we have the resolve. This is not an easy task we have started upon. This is a hard and arduous trail. I do not think anyone in the House fully understands the extent and difficulty of the journey. Does the member think the government will have the clear resolve--

[Main Estimates, 2001-02, June 12th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I listened with some interest to the member for Madawaska—Restigouche speak on the merits of the government and what it has done as a health care provider.

Since he is a member of the government I certainly understand that he would want to sing the merits of the government, but I just do not understand how he is able to do that.

Certainly I do not expect that the health care provided in his riding is much better than the health care provided in my riding of South Shore. In the village of New Ross where I live, we are 40 or so kilometres from the nearest doctor. People who cut themselves or get their hand caught in a piece of equipment have to hold it together as best they can until they can get to a doctor. There is certainly none in the community. There was when I grew up there. There was always a doctor there, but there are no doctors in rural Canada.

Members should not stand there and sing the praises of the government and what it has done to help rural Canadians and provide health care because it is just not there.

There is a question that I actually do want to raise now that members have finished singing the praises of the government. Now that they have finished, they can answer a question on a specific item. The item is one that was brought up earlier. It is a serious potential health hazard and I would go so far as to say that it is a serious health hazard now. It is bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.

This is the hidden health care risk that Canadians face and that the government in particular does not want to recognize. It does not want to recognize the big issues and the real problems that it could face. This is the hidden health care risk. It is out there behind the scenes and we do not know just how quickly it is going to rear its ugly head.

We have chronic wasting disease in deer and elk. We have BSE potentially being spread from blood product, from beef and sheep and animal products that have not been prepared properly. We expect that it will be just as big an issue in Canada as it was in Britain unless the government is willing to be proactive and do something about it in a very proactive way, take a risk, spend some money, find out what the problem is and do something about it to protect our health care and protect our agriculture industry in Canada.

What will the government do about it? The government has done nothing so far.

[Sustainable Development, June 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the government had $100 million in the 2000 budget for the sustainable development technology fund, Bill C-46. The government reintroduced the bill as Bill C-4 in the current session.

Part of this money was transferred in April 2001 in direct violation of section 2 of the Financial Administration Act which designates the end of the fiscal year as March 31. Why do the minister and the government continue to circumvent parliament?

[Harbours, June 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the government has sold most of Canada's harbour infrastructure and now it is actually selling harbour bottoms. Some of those harbour bottoms include large tracts of ocean bottom and channels that are several kilometres long.

Why would the government even consider such a thing? Where is the Minister of the Environment, where is the Minister of Transport, where is the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and where is the minister responsible for ACOA who represents much of Atlantic Canada, on this issue?

[Farm Credit Corporation Act, June 8th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House to speak to third reading of Bill C-25 and to represent our PC agricultural critic, the member for Brandon—Souris.

I talked to the member and he wanted to go through a chronology of events on how it evolved in Canadian history from 1927 to the present date. I think there were five or six pages, which I will leave out of my speech today. However, a brief chronology is certainly in line.

The FCC, Farm Credit Corporation, was created on October 5, 1959, by the Diefenbaker Conservative government when the Farm Credit Act was proclaimed into law. It provided a consistent source of lending services that farmers could rely on through all the economic cycles, the ups and downs of the economic cycles. At the time the corporation was mandated to provide one product at one rate. First, it was mortgages to farmers to a maximum loan of $20,000.

During the first 34 years the Farm Credit Corporation and the Farm Credit Act went through many evolutions to keep step with the agriculture industry. In 1968 farming corporations became eligible for farm credit loans and loan limits increased to $150,000 in 1975. The 1982 amendments to the act led to the introduction of more loan product and the FCC made its debut on capital markets.

In 1993 the Farm Credit Act was replaced with the Farm Credit Corporation Act, which expanded the mandate of the FCC to better respond to the needs of the agriculture sector. Farm Credit Corporation could now offer producers financing to purchase or improve farmland and buildings, buy personal property for farming purposes and consolidate debts. It enabled the corporation to support value added production by providing financing for diversified enterprises on and off the farm.

This act helped bring the FCC in sync with the changing marketplace. The Farm Credit Corporation's loan portfolio has grown since those days from $3.4 billion in 1993 when the act was introduced to $6 billion today.

Today this crown corporation services 44,000 customers, has 900 employees and 100 offices across Canada.

It is important to understand that little chronology of events because what that tells us is the Farm Credit Corporation, from its introduction in 1959 by the Diefenbaker government, recognizes the needs and wants of farmers, and the agriculture community has responded and changed its situation, its portfolios and the services that it offers to accommodate changing times.

From 1984 to 1993 specifically, the Progressive Conservative government of the day improved the way the Farm Credit Corporation was managed. We brought in the Farm Credit Corporation equity building plan in 1990 to allow farmers to extend their leases and buyback land once they were on firmer financial ground. We moved the head office of Farm Credit Corporation to Regina, so it could be closer to those who used it the most. We passed a bill to expand the role of the Farm Credit Corporation allowing it to make loans to farmers who wanted to diversify their operations.

All these things were asked for by the agriculture community, and the Conservative government of the day responded to the wishes of the community.

There are a few major elements of Bill C-25. One, it would change the name to Farm Credit Canada. The mandate of the FCC would be expanded from financial services to farming operations and businesses related to farming to also include business services and products to such enterprises.

Farm Credit Corporation would have the authority to provide loans to businesses relating to farming in both cases where the business was majority owned by farmers and when it was not, quite significantly changing the mandate of the Farm Credit Corporation.

There is specific provision in the bill to emphasize the focus of the Farm Credit Corporation activities on farming operations including family farms. The FCC would be given authority to incorporate, amalgamate and dissolve subsidiaries. It would also provide lease financing for assets used or to be used in a farming operation or a business related to farming.

The Farm Credit Corporation would be given the authority to acquire and dispose of equity interests in farming operations or in businesses related to farming. The president of the FCC would be designated as its CEO and provision would be made for the appointment of an acting president and an acting chairperson when necessary.

The bill does not come to the House without some criticisms and it is only fair to mention some of those criticisms here today.

First, the name change is unnecessary and costly. It is certainly our belief that the minister is looking for a legacy for years of failed federal leadership in supporting agriculture from this government.

The bill has the potential to unnecessarily compete directly with credit unions and banks. We are not sure that will happen but the potential is there. The purpose of the FCC is to provide lending to farmers specifically, not to equipment dealers, wheat pools, for example the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool or any other wheat pool.

Although the bill expands lending powers of the Farm Credit Corporation, farmers do not need more debt at the present time. While the federal budgets for agriculture have been cut since 1993 by 65%, the total farm debt in Canada has increased by 44% since 1994. Statistics Canada and Revenue Canada statistics in 1999 report that the average farm debt in the country is $135,000.

[Farm Credit Corporation Act, June 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party will vote yes.

[Patent Act, June 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party will be voting yes to the motion.

[Atlantic Salmon, June 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Greenland, after a three year suspension, is preparing to catch 200 tonnes of Atlantic salmon, yet the number of salmon returning to Canadian rivers has dropped to 350,000 from more than 1.5 million in the 1970s.

It is clear that any Greenland fishery is wrong-headed. Salmon return to their native rivers to spawn after spending one to four years at sea and the 550 rivers on the east coast will be without salmon if careless and unsustainable fisheries are allowed to occur.

On the west coast we recognize that salmon belong to country to which they return to spawn, not to anyone on the high seas.

Is the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans prepared to make sure that similar protection is afforded to Atlantic salmon that we already give to salmon on the west coast?

[Farm Credit Corporation Act, June 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak specifically to the three amendments to Bill C-25 proposed by the Canadian Alliance Party. I begin by saying that all three Alliance amendments before us today were discussed and debated at committee, as I understand it, and were changed slightly and brought back to the House. Although the member of parliament for Cypress Hills—Grasslands has modified them slightly, he has not modified them enough to suit the member for Brandon—Souris, our agriculture critic, and therefore the tenets of the Conservative Party.

Motion No. 1 would actually remove the words family farm from the bill, as was stated by my NDP colleague. Members of the House and people across Canada have different definitions of what a family farm actually constitutes, but our party believes it is important for family farms to be recognized specifically in the mandate of the Farm Credit Corporation.

I have said at other times in the House that I grew up on a very small family farm. The farm I actually own today is one piece of land. It is a piece of woodland and not an actual piece of agricultural land. It is a very small piece of only 20 acres, but it has been in my family for five generations. My sons, if they inherit that property, would have that piece of land for a six generation.

There are those of us in the House who are not far away from the family farm. I am quite shocked and surprised the Alliance that claims to represent large segments of rural Canada would allow itself to be divorced or separated from the notion of the family farm, which I think many of us hold very near and dear to our hearts.

The family farm and primary production should be the primary focus of the activities of the Farm Credit Corporation, not simply farming operations, agribusinesses or something that is divorced and removed from the word farm.

Is that the next to go? Will it be not just family farms but farming operations altogether? Suddenly those of us who were farmers in another life will be not farmers any longer but producers. I am very proud to say I was a farmer and expect to be a farmer again some day, not a producer which does not mean anything. I could produce cardboard boxes. A farmer is a definition that holds a totally different meaning from the word producer.

By eliminating family farms from the clause would definitely be a step backward. It would actually do a disservice to family farms across Canada by omitting them from the bill. Furthermore, as was mentioned already, John Ryan, president of the Farm Credit Corporation, stated in the standing committee that discussions were held with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture on the wording of the bill and ultimately it was satisfied. He also stated:

So we clearly do, very seriously, take the fact that it's primary production that's our focus.

Even with that being said, we will not be supporting the motion.

Motion No. 2 speaks to the issue of competition. I find it difficult to believe that the Alliance Party has actually introduced this amendment again. The amendment is not only restrictive and limiting to Farm Credit Corporation activities but it speaks against the idea of competition. Perhaps it is another policy shift for the Alliance Party and now it does not support open competition.

The Farm Credit Corporation should be allowed to compete with other financial institutions. Competition is healthy. The mandate of the FCC has been significantly expanded since its creation. It is no longer a lender of last resort. Nor should it be. It has tailored its operations to the agriculture and agribusiness community.

If commercial banks want to enter those areas, and I think we should encourage them to do so, they are welcome. It is pretty difficult as a farmer to get any kind of serious loan from a commercial bank based on the merits of a farming operation. The competition will only benefit farmers in the end. Again the PC Party will not be supporting the motion.

Motion No. 3 speaks to the issue of farmland ownership. Once again this matter was discussed during committee deliberations. The amendment could place limitations on Farm Credit Corporation activities. Let us take the example of young farmers and the opportunity for an intergenerational transfer of farms: for one to be able to acquire land directly from family members and lease it back to them over a long period of time so they can eventually acquire ownership. The amendment could prevent it from happening if a time limit were imposed.

The president of the Farm Credit Corporation stated in committee that he would be quite comfortable with a five year limit. That was consistent with remarks he made at a previous committee meeting. The average time for land disposal at the Farm Credit Corporation is actually about eight months, which allows for more than enough time set out in the amendment.

On the basis of what the president of the Farm Credit Corporation said, the PC Party will consider the passage of the amendment, but it is certainly one that we do not look at lightly. We have deliberated on it and put some serious thought into it.

In conclusion, I urge all members of the House to remember that many of us in the agriculture business are representatives of family farms or people who are first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth generation, or even more, on family farms. For goodness' sake, let us remember the family farm is an important institution and should be preserved.