Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to join this debate on the agricultural industry across this country. Of course we all have seen the statistics in the last little while. In my home province of Saskatchewan, there has been a $1 billion drop in two seasons. That is a slide that is just about impossible to come back from.
What concerns a lot of us in the House, and my colleagues have alluded to it just in the last couple of minutes, is the respect for our people on the land. It is not there anymore. We are seeing a huge disconnect between people who pick up their groceries off the shelf at the grocery store and the people who actually produce the goods, the ones who put the blood, sweat and tears into the production. We are seeing net farm incomes drop to levels we have not seen since the 1920s, and of course our input costs are in 2004.
The statistics we see are staggering, as is the lack of attention from the government on this file. We have seen some ad hoc moneys tossed around. We have seen agriculture ministers come and go, along with their policy ideas. They come and go. We do not see any long term stability, market certainty or cashflow, all of those things that business requires.
And agriculture is a huge business. Whether one is the guy on the land or the guy raising the cattle, sheep or whatever, it is a huge business in this country. It puts $36 billion annually into our gross domestic product. It is the third largest contributor. There are 250,000 jobs that work off that farm base. It is a huge industry.
Why the government of the day--and for the last decade--cannot come to grips with the importance of the viability of that industry just boggles my mind. I cannot for the life of me understand how the Liberal government cannot address this slide that agriculture has been on, especially for the last 10 years. It has let it get to unprecedented low levels.
Is it a spending priority for the government? No.
We have seen that. We have seen other programs come forward for “friends of”. That is what our motion addresses today: the priorities of the government. We have been seeing a lot of different issues covered in a weekend. Decisions on $100 million jets for the Prime Minister can be arrived at in one or two days. As for backstopping agriculture, we are 11 months into this crisis and we still cannot get the cash off the cabinet table to the kitchen tables.
CFIP is the program that was supposed to be the answer to a lot of this backstopping of agriculture in 2002. The payments are finally going out now with 70% of what people qualify for being paid because the government says the budget has run out.
We have little things around here called the supplementary estimates. You have seen those come and go, Mr. Speaker, and you know what kinds of programs can be topped up and backstopped. Of course agriculture should be and could have been, but the government did not have the political will to do it. I guess that with only 2% of the population being farmers, it is not a big enough voting base to get the government's attention.
However, everybody in this country likes to eat. That safe, secure, quality food that we all enjoy is in peril. It is at risk. We no longer can control the costs if we start going offshore, and there is the processing and all the industries that are built upon that primary industry.
Let us look at the last program on BSE. Let us think of the livestock industry and think of it as a pie. A quarter of it is the cow-calf guy, a quarter of it is the stocker or the backgrounder getting these cattle ready for the third part, which is the feedlots, and then into the processing sector. The government decided it was going to fix the livestock and backstop the BSE thing. What does it do? It pipes the money into the processing level. It does not flow back downhill. If we start putting money in at the farm gate, we could save an industry because it will ratchet up but it will not go backward. We saw that happen in the last little while.
I would like to announce that I will be splitting my time with the member for Lanark—Carleton, so I would appreciate knowing when I am getting close to my boundaries.
We have seen that program happening. In the agricultural committee now, we are spending all of our time looking back at what went wrong when we have farmers out there going broke day by day. Agriculture in this country has always been next year. It always has been, “It will be better next year”. Now I have guys phoning in saying they are not going to make next month.
We have seeding coming up within a couple of months. There is no cashflow. We are still paying off bills from the year before because the government was not there.
Nobody wants the government in their face and we already have too many bureaucrats and consultants running around out there, but there are times when an industry is in crisis. This has been a disaster unparalleled in this country and we are not seeing the government rise to the challenge.
To that end, watching what the Liberals have not done, the Conservative Party on this side of the House has put together a program in the last few days. We announced it this morning in a press release. We are looking at a Conservative government being formed hopefully in the next short while and we are looking at a $1 billion package.
We have seen $1 billion come and go in this place with no impact on society, none at all. The money was just gone. We are talking about $1 billion to backstop agriculture. We are talking about topping up that 2002 CFIP, which the government has not seen fit to do. We are talking about getting the money out there. We are talking about getting 100% of what farmers qualify for out there. That is the least we can do. That has to be done.
Second, our processing capacity in this country has to be increased. There are a tremendous amount of livestock sectors that have no avenue for getting their animals processed. We are still importing because we cannot address it, and yet there is a glut of animals that need to be on the store shelves and cannot get there. That processing has to be increased.
On mature livestock, by industry numbers there are 700,000 mature cattle out there--cull cows, canner bulls and that type of thing--that may be carrying BSE. We do not know. We do not think they are, but there were still glitches after the 1997 feed ban. Those cattle have to disappear. We have to rationalize that herd.
Our herds have gone from an average of 13 million head up to 15 million now. There are going to be another 500,000 calves in the next little while. They are coming out of a lot of those cull cows that were carried over; they are going to drop a calf. That will compound the problem, not help it. Those cattle have to be moved aside and producers paid out for them to help give them a bit of cashflow so they can keep their own industry robust, so they can keep the young stock and get them fed. That is going to be a problem.
The CAIS program, the former minister's answer to everything, the APF, is too little too late. It is a five year program and that is fine. Let us get some long term results out there to farmers. The problem with the CAIS program is that only one-third of the money that is allocated goes to the farm gate. The other two-thirds goes into a wish list of Liberaldom. The Liberals are talking about climate, environment and food safety, and that is all worthwhile stuff, maybe, but it should not come under and at the expense of the farm gate. Without those guys producing the basic product we do not need any of the other stuff. The government has even slipped the Internet in there again. We are already there. We have already done that.
Let us get some real money into the CAIS program, money that will backstop farmers. Let us start talking about rules and regulations for CAIS that will be farmer friendly. Having to top up or put in a cash reserve to qualify for government money is redundant. If I have that kind of cash, I do not need the government and I do not want the government in my face. We have to start looking at the rules and regulations and make them farmer friendly. The bureaucrats under the Liberal regime cannot seem to find that answer, that magic bullet.
We have to talk about interest free cash advances for the cow-calf guys. They are into another cycle and are carrying over calves because it did not pay to sell them. There is feed to buy and pasture to line up. We have to backstop those folks. Interest free cash advances are the way to go.
Of course, we have to show lending institutions that the government is serious about agriculture. As they pull back, the government is going to have to step in. We have to talk about loan guarantees and covering off the interest. We have the vehicle in the Farm Credit Corporation if we want to get loan guarantees out to the backgrounders in the feedlots to keep the cycle vibrant and working.
That, in a nutshell, is our program. Those are the short term solutions. In the mid term, we have to look at ramping up testing in conjunction with our major importers. The customer is always right: If they are demanding more testing then we had better be there with them. We must also have some government direction on the protocols on rendering and SRM handling, handling of the specific risk materials that are part of this problem.
To that end, I would like to move an amendment. I move:
That the motion be amended by adding:
By implementing the Conservative Party of Canada's one billion dollar plan.
