Mr. Speaker, I am truly delighted to be speaking to this budget. I will be splitting my time with the member for Brant.
As this is only my second time to speak in the House since I was elected, I want to take the opportunity to thank the constituents of Vegreville—Wainwright for their tremendous show of support in this past election. There were 80% of the people from my constituency who supported me and that truly is humbling. It played a very important part in giving this side a very stable Conservative government and I am delighted to be a part of that.
I would also like to thank my many volunteers. There were over 300 volunteers who played a very active role in the election process. Many do not only work during election campaigns, but they do a lot of work month to month, year to year, to support a cause that is important to them. In my case, that is the Conservative cause and that is what they and others across the country supported, which led to this very strong majority government. I sincerely thank them for that.
I want to speak a little about agriculture and this budget. Of course, there were things in this budget dealing with agriculture. For example, there was money allocated to have consultations and develop a new growing forward 2 package to replace the current growing forward program. This would allow farmers, people in the agriculture business and those people interested across this country to help develop the next stabilization package.
The package we have has worked pretty well and will form a strong base for the second growing forward package. However, there is always room for improvement and we would get the best results if we have people who are concerned and interested in agriculture taking part in this consultation process. I encourage anyone who would like to see change to get involved in the process which starts almost immediately. I am looking forward to having some input into that process as it goes along.
As well, budget 2011 focuses on supporting innovation as a way to make agriculture more profitable. I think that is a very wise expenditure of taxpayers' money and we have seen some excellent results in recent years. When we look at taxpayers' money that has been leveraged, often with a vast majority of the money coming from the private sector, we have seen results. This allows Canadian farmers to compete with the world very favourably.
More than that, in many cases we have seen Canadian business, farmers and others export these new ideas and products around the world. That is an important part of developing innovation. Not only are agriculture products produced more efficiently as a result of innovation, but exporting innovation around the world is something that certainly broadens agriculture in Canada.
Much of what our government will do in the area of agriculture over the next year really will not show up in this budget, but that does not mean it is any less important. In fact, if we were to look at one area of work that our government is doing that is more important to farmers than any other area, I have no doubt that would be the area of expanding trade in agriculture products around the world.
We have seen our agriculture minister, trade minister and our Prime Minister take a very hands-on and active approach to help develop new markets for our agriculture products. We have seen remarkable results from that. Unfortunately, the agreements have been signed, but the actual passing of some of these trade agreements in Parliament have been slowed down by opposition, in fact, mostly by the NDP.
I strongly encourage members of the NDP who care about farmers and care about agriculture to work with this government from now on and help pass these trade agreements in Parliament so the benefits can be reaped by farmers as soon as possible. That is something I am looking forward to. Nothing done by this government in the area of agriculture is more important than developing those new markets around the world.
There are far more benefits to be gained. We are looking at negotiating pretty broad agreements with the European Union, which is important. We are always looking at how we can get better access to China, to India, to other places. These bilateral agreements will continue to be important. I would argue they will become even more important in the years to come. That is an extremely important area.
There are other areas involving trade that do not only look at exporting Canadian products to other countries, but rather look at importing inputs that farmers use to grow crops, to raise livestock, all of that kind of thing. This would allow those inputs more freely into Canada so they can be less expensive and so that we can have access to brand new technology, brand new herbicides, pesticides, veterinary products here in Canada at the same time our American, European and Australian competitors have access to these products. That is another aspect of improving trade that is extremely important.
Maybe it is not talked about as much, but we saw benefits from the own use program. That program helped farmers bring in herbicides, pesticides, veterinary products from the United States, which allowed them to lower their costs of producing animals and crops substantially. That program helped in a very real and substantial way. We have a lot of room to expand that well beyond what it is now. Part of that too is coordination. It has been worked on for many years but much is still to be done on coordinating the approval process for new pesticides, herbicides and veterinary products.
That coordination of the approval process between Canada, the United States, Europe and other like countries that have good processes in place now would mean that our farmers would get access to these products that will help them in a very real way. They will have access much sooner. I am looking forward to our government continuing to work on that.
As well, there are other things in the budget that would help farmers. They are not aimed specifically at farmers, but they would help them.
For example, our program to forgive up to $40,000 in student loans for doctors who will practise in a rural area would help to give our farmers much better access to a family doctor closer to home. That is a huge problem we face right now. We have done a lot of work in the immigration area. The immigration minister has done some really good things to help speed up the process to get doctors into Canada. Many of those doctors do come to rural areas, but it seems all too often in a few years down the road they move off to cities. We have to try to attract some Canadian trained doctors to rural areas by helping to assist them pay off their loans. We would also pay up to $20,000 in student loans for nurses.
In my minute remaining I want to let farmers know that now is not the time to sit back and become disengaged from the political process. Now is the ideal time to get involved with our government, with their rural MPs. We actually have most of the rural MPs in the country in our caucus. I would ask our farmers to get involved with their rural MPs to help move some of these things forward. Together we truly can do a lot that would make things better for our farmers and for agriculture. I am looking forward to that in the next four and a half years, which is the guaranteed mandate of this government.
