House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was trade.

Last in Parliament October 2017, as Conservative MP for Battlefords—Lloydminster (Saskatchewan)

Won his last election, in 2015, with 61% of the vote.

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Statements in the House

Supply March 20th, 2001

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his intervention. He is quite right that the net income on a farm is a very elusive target if there is any at all.

Seventy-five per cent of the farms in western Canada are viable only because of off farm income, that is husband and/or wife both working off farm to keep the cows in the barn.

The problem with the AIDA money, and he is talking about the $2.6 billion that was in the global budget, is that less than 60% of it ever left the cabinet table and got on to the kitchen tables. That includes 1998 and 1999.

Distraught farmers in my riding have been phoning me. Less than two-thirds of what they applied for in 1998 ever came to them. Now they are getting clawback notices from the minister of agriculture and his friends asking them to send back two-thirds of it because they were overpaid. Can we imagine being on the bankrupt rolls and being asked to send money back?

The government has rejigged the formula to include things that were not in the original formula. That would be fine if it triggers more money when the government could not get it all out in the first place, but it will now claw back the two-thirds it sent out.

The payments for 1999 are finally coming out. Guess what year it is? It is 2001. Is it a bankable program? My sweet aunt Fanny, it never got out there. It is sending out only two-thirds of the 1999 money because it is scared it will run out of money. What an absolutely ludicrous reason. The government never sent out more than 60% to begin with and it just put another $500 million in the same clogged pipe.

That pipe must be clogged with Liberal logic because we never saw any of the money out west. The Saskatchewan grains and oilseed sector is hardest hit in the country. How can the government sit across there and vote against any more money being topped in? It would not matter if we were asking for $10 billion today. Nobody would qualify.

Supply March 20th, 2001

Mr. Speaker, it was just over three years ago, as a rookie MP with a farming background from a rural riding in western Canada, I stood here with a certain amount of pride and dignity to talk about farming issues.

Three years ago agriculture in western Canada was on a slippery slope. We started to realize that farming out west was 90% politics and 10% producing the product.

We have seen agriculture over the last three years decline to the point that we have an industry in crisis. Agriculture is one of the largest industries in the country when we consider the inputs that go into the ground, the processing that applies to everything we produce and the jobs created on the in and the out.

The agriculture minister stood in this place and said to western Canadians and Ontario producers that crop insurance and NISA were the answers to global subsidization problems. What a ridiculous statement.

Later the Prime Minister stood in his place and we heard him say that there could not be an agricultural crisis because he did not read about it in the National Post or the Globe and Mail .

Those newspapers do not represent the problems we have in western Canada or in rural Ontario, let alone in Quebec or the maritimes. An editorial writer from the Globe and Mail who is based in Winnipeg decried the whole situation. What a joke. Those people should get outside the city, have a look around and talk to producers who cannot afford to put bread on their own table let alone put a crop in the ground this year.

There is a lot of talk about the $500 million that has been allocated. There are a couple of problems with that number. When we look at the budget that the government handles, close to $160 billion this year, $500 million is not a lot of money in that context. It is a lot of money when compared to other industries that receive money from the government, but we are talking about the third largest contributor to the GDP.

The problem has gone way past the farm gate. As I alluded to, a tremendous number of service industries feed into the agricultural sector. Input costs have gone up 50%, 100%, or 200% in some cases, for fuel, fertilizer, chemicals, land taxes, machinery costs and so on.

The member who spoke before talked about a 1,000 acre western farm. That would be a hobby farm out there. The average farm in the west approaches 3,000 to 4,000 acres. There are all kinds of large farms in my riding with 10,000, 12,000 and 15,000 acres that try and make a go of it. The average cost of machinery is in excess of $1 million to $2 million on each farm.

The problem with all those inputs, the parts and everything else that keeps them running, is our low dollar. All the input costs are based on American money. We are starting out 37 to 40 cents behind, and those costs are rising.

The Prime Minister says that the low dollar is great for everybody because it helps with our exports. Well it has not seemed to help with my export prices on commodities that the wheat board handles but it certainly has cost me a lot in the pocketbook on the input side.

The freight system in western Canada is now based on conflict and animosity rather than being commercially based and properly tendered. Rising transportation inputs are probably the highest costs on my farm. Transportation costs me at least one-third off the top, which is absolutely ridiculous.

The answer to rising transportation costs on the prairies is to go higher up the food chain. Let us value add to the grain, durum, barley and so on. Let us run the flour mills and pasta plants, which have been tried and shut down because of regulations controlling the way we must buy and re-buy our own products. It is absolutely ludicrous. We are forced to pay freight and elevation charges on a product that never leaves the farm. How smart is that?

When that is explained to backbenchers on the other side they say that it is ridiculous. They ask why durum growers cannot build their own pasta plants and grind their durum into flour and recoup the extra $3 a bushel. The Canadian Wheat Board says that we cannot do that.

Ministers, like the one from Prince Edward Island who stood here and said that the wheat board is a great thing, do not live on the prairies. The people who come from these opposition benches do live there and we all got elected in 1993, 1997 and 2000 campaigning on an open and accountable optional marketing system. We need that.

The wheat board does not export out into the global market as it used to. Everything it buys and sells now goes through a line company, hence the transportation, freight and elevation charges to tidewater. There are no terminals on the west or east coasts. It is run back through one of the line companies. Who is making the money? It is not coming back to the producer at the farm gate.

Where do we go? The debate today is on subsidies, safety nets and the role of government. The role of government in this institution is to play catch up. The farm is in crisis. We must have a cash injection before spring. Farm groups and provincial governments are lobbying for a minimum of $900 million from the federal government and the balance of 40 cents on the dollar from the provinces. They thought that would get the crop in the ground and that hopefully the European and American subsidies would start tailing off. We have seen crop problems in the rest of the world that may bring the price back up.

We need those options. We must be able to do that. We must be able to value add, as I said. We need the government to look at the tax component of our input costs and the huge freight problem in the west.

There are answers. We need a safety net system. There is talk about short and long term situations. In the short term we need cash to get the crop in the ground. There is no doubt about it because we are playing catch up.

In the long term we need a NISA account that will allow us to level the playing field for good and bad years. Even the agriculture minister now realizes his previous position was wrong. We must be able to use the NISA account to level out the bad years. We must change the fundamental way NISA is handled so young farmers can get a start. The average age of farmers in Saskatchewan is 60. We have lost two generations of young producers because they cannot afford to get into the industry. We need a NISA account that will allow that type of thing to happen.

We need crop insurance that is user friendly so we can insure crops that are not covered properly now. When there is a claim we need results to be specific to one farm and not calculated as a general average, as is done with the costs.

We need a long term trade type of cushioning mechanism. It can be the trade distortion thing we talked about with the Crow money or a system like GRIP or MRI in Ontario, but it must be able to soften the blow of offshore improper trade subsidies. That is the long term requirement, but we need cash today to be able to keep on farming.

I am sharing my time with the member for Crowfoot who I know has some great points to put on the record today.

Agriculture March 20th, 2001

Mr. Speaker, recently the government attempted to address the anguish of Canadian farmers by tossing out some old money and claiming it was new. The fact that the amount was still too little does not seem to bother the government. In fact it diverted untold thousands of dollars to big city newspapers to brag to urban Canadians about their phony compassion.

The agriculture minister claimed he was merely trying to inform all Canadians about the great job he was doing. However, the ads failed to mention that farm programs were slashed over the last year while our trading partners continued to prop up their industries. The ads did not mention that almost half the money promised back in 1998 was never delivered, while the part that was delivered is now being clawed back.

Government advertising is not the real issue. Did it ever occur to the government that thousands of Canadian travellers should be informed that the hoof and mouth virus rampaging through European herds can be carried on shoes, clothing or on fresh foods? Did it ever occur to the government to stop patting itself on the back and to put resources in the hands of farmers and inspectors who will save Canadian agriculture, despite the Liberal government?

Government Of Canada October 20th, 2000

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the top 10 planks of this Liberal government's legacy. They are: $25 billion ripped out of health care; EI surpluses scooped and put into general revenues, and God knows where they went; the civil servant pension surplus savaged; HRDC grants and giveaways, with half of 1% of files investigated leading to 11 criminal investigations; complete disregard for all hep-C victims; the APEC inquiry and the Somali inquiry stonewalled and interfered with constantly; Bill C-68, the firearms registry, with a cost of half a billion dollars so far, which would be better spent on real policing and real public safety; promised reform of the Young Offenders Act dies again; criminal justice that holds criminal rights above victims rights; and priorities in law making that put the safety of poodles ahead of the safety of our children from pedophiles. Any of these top 10 would make a fitting epitaph for the Liberal government come election day.

Agriculture September 25th, 2000

Mr. Speaker, the election must be getting close. The Liberal ads are getting bigger and better.

The minister of agriculture stubbornly refuses to admit that all his multi-million promises to Canadian farmers are not worth the paper his press releases are printed on. Farmers wait months for responses to their requests for assistance after spending hundreds of dollars getting them prepared by professional accountants.

I suggest to the minister that his programs are too complex for the people who need help. As it is, 58% of the claims in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, two of the hardest hit areas, are rejected. Ninety per cent of claims for 1999 remain unprocessed. I suggest to the minister that his programs are too complex for the people he has running them.

On Friday the minister stated that the full commitment of $600 million had been disbursed for 1998. That is not so. In fact that is the total including the 40% provincial contribution; a couple of dollars short. Of the promised 1.7 billion federal dollars only 41% has gone out to the few farmers who have been able to fight through the government red tape.

Clearly it would be enlightening to have all Canadians check the facts on this government.

Questions Passed As Orders For Returns September 18th, 2000

For each of the fiscal years from 1994 to 1998, what were the infrastructure expenditures under the Canada Agri-Infrastructure Program (CAIP), including but not confined to: (a) contractor; (b) location; (c) nature of work undertaken; and (d) total moneys awarded including supplementary funds if any.

Return tabled.

Gun Registry June 15th, 2000

Mr. Speaker, the justice minister's political assets have been saved again. The supreme court upheld her flawed gun registry.

The minister claims her registry has stopped hundreds of undesirable characters from obtaining firearms permits.

One of those undesirables was from my riding. He was repeatedly rejected because his name appeared on too many files where firearms were involved. The computer did not realize this applicant was an RCMP corporal and the firearms verifier for his detachment, hence his name on the firearms files. I know that I will sleep better knowing the system will not licence an RCMP officer's sporting rifle.

The minister's outrageously expensive outreach program is another sham. A quick check of her Internet site found shopowners and individuals who received cartons of registry files in the mail from the minister with no explanation as to what was expected. That is a lot like the heritage minister's flag fiasco.

The registry budget has skyrocketed and public support has plummeted. The Canadian public is aware that this whole exercise is more about saving political face than public safety. The majority of Canadians say “Just scrap it”.

.CAPS. Le Baluchon Alternative School

Agriculture June 14th, 2000

Mr. Speaker, the government is continuing to prove that it is big on press releases and promises and real short on delivery.

Less than 30% of the $2 billion promised to farmers has gone out while the further $400 million in transportation assistance for Saskatchewan and Manitoba will be clawed back from any future AIDA payouts in those two provinces.

The only help the Liberal government has given to farmers is that everything it touches turns to fertilizer. I ask the minister how many times can the same promised money be recycled through the same failed programs?

Agriculture June 1st, 2000

Mr. Speaker, earlier today we saw the government deny a simple request to table the report on our assistance for struggling agricultural producers.

This report is the result of 70 public meetings, and that means open to everyone who wanted to come, across the country which heard from nearly 4,000 farmers about the issues that affect their livelihood.

What is the government afraid of? Is it the fact that the minister's AIDA program is a flop? Some 90% of farmers told us that, or is it that the Liberal government is seen more as the cause than the cure of our agricultural problems? In other words, are the Liberals afraid of facing a grassroots report card on their failing grade agricultural policies?

Committees Of The House June 1st, 2000

Mr. Speaker, talk about the Jurassic era. We just heard from it. The member talked about the thirties and forties. Agriculture has grown and changed since that time. People are marketing on their own now.

Has the member heard of crops like lentils, peas, canola, mustard, canary, spices and everything else? Those are not wheat board crops but they are doing very well. They are not having any problem marketing their products. They are not having any problem getting those products to port and not being charged demurrage on them.

There is definitely a need for a wheat board. We never said to destroy the board. We are saying make it open and accountable to the people it serves. There will be elections again this coming fall. We will see more open market people elected to that board.