Mr. Speaker, I would like to start today by thanking my constituents from the bottom of my heart for their support in the past election. More than 77% chose to support me and I sincerely thank them. I appreciate the great honour they have bestowed on me once again.
I also want to thank all of those who came out to vote for other political parties, because I am concerned, as are many of us in the House, with the declining voter turnout in our country. It is an important issue for all of us. I feel somewhat embarrassed that the electorate turnout percentage in the United States was higher than it was in Canada. I am sure it is not something Canadians are proud of, and I know they will change that in the next election. I am looking forward to that, certainly.
I am in the House of Commons not only because this is an exciting and interesting job, which it certainly is, but also because there are certain things I want to do.
I am a member of the Conservative Party because I believe it represents those things better than any other political party.
Many others in the House believe in a different agenda and in approaching things differently. I am sure every member of every party believes their party can best represent what is good for this country, and I respect that. I also respect the fact that voters chose to elect each of us in the House, and I congratulate all members of the House for winning their elections. It is truly a great honour, and we have important work to do.
I know there has been a lot of talk since the last Parliament about decorum in the House and about working together. The interesting thing is that in committees and in many areas we do work together quite well. Maybe the divisions and the undesirable comments that go back and forth are not as frequent as the general public believes. It is important for us to get that message out as well.
And it is important to work together. We have been given our third minority government, and Canadians expect us to work together to make this government work. I know that the Prime Minister and the Conservative members of Parliament understand that, and I know other members do too.
We are truly blessed to live in this wonderful country of Canada. It is important to remember that the freedoms we have exist because our fathers, mothers, grandparents, great-grandparents, and the generations before them sacrificed and took initiative beyond what we can only imagine to build and develop the country we have today. It is a truly remarkable country. As Canadians we share remarkable freedoms that are shared by very few other people on the face of the earth.
We are in a time when we have to show a level of leadership and a wisdom in leadership that we have needed at very few times in history. The situations we are facing, especially in the financial markets and the economy, are very serious and will require united action. I encourage every member of the House to be a part of that and to make things work.
In my constituency the two main industries are the oil and gas sector and the agriculture sector, and they are what I want to talk about in my remaining time today.
Both of these sectors are the sources of thousands of jobs in my constituency, and both of them create jobs for others right across the country as well.
The oil and gas industry has been a driving force in providing wealth for communities in my constituency and for workers in all provinces across this country. This industry is a vibrant one. It can, has, and will continue to meet and to exceed the environmental standards expected of it.
Agriculture is the most important long-term and renewable industry in my constituency and in Canada. No industry is more important.
I was raised on a mixed farm and I am still involved in a grain farm on a crop share basis. Many of my friends and neighbours are farmers.
Our party cares deeply about farmers because our party has deep roots in rural communities right across Canada. I am proud of that. I am proud of what our government has done to date on agriculture over the past two and a half years. I want to talk about that.
As the member of Parliament for Vegreville—Wainwright, I have provided substantial input into many issues to do with agriculture. In our party and in our caucus we are free to do that, and many of my colleagues have provided a lot of input.
On the broader issues, of course, decisions are made by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board in cooperation with some of our incredibly capable public servants in the department.
However, many members in the House take on particular issues. These are not large issues nationally, but they are very important to individual groups and to people in certain constituencies. I want to talk a little about some of these issues.
My colleagues and I have been successful in providing control for gophers, which are one of the most devastating pests to crops and pastures in the prairie provinces in particular. Returning 2% liquid strychnine to farmers probably saves them over $200 million a year. When we are talking about billions of dollars all the time, sometimes $200 million does not sound like a lot, but to my friends and my neighbours and my colleagues it is important. Our government has done that because a small group of us have taken it on as an issue and lobbied for it.
We have also lobbied to extend the own-use imports program for glyphosate and expanded it to a number of other products. Under the replacement program for own-use imports, the GROU program, farmers can now import these products from the United States in particular, again saving farmers tens of millions of dollars each and every year.
We have ensured that our cattlemen can continue to bring IVOMEC across the border from the United States, saving them tens of millions of dollars a year.
Why not talk about the billions of dollars all the time and about the tens of billions of dollars that we spend on other programs? We certainly do talk about that a lot, but it is important to look at these so-called smaller issues that are critically important to a particular group of people.
I want to talk a little about what we have done over the past two years in terms of larger programs. On June 29, 2007, the federal, provincial and territorial ministers of agriculture agreed in principle on growing forward, the new policy framework for Canada's agriculture, agrifood and agri-based products industry. The vision of growing forward is a profitable and innovative agriculture, agrifood and agri-based products industry that seizes opportunities in responding to market demands and contributes to the health and well-being of Canadians.
On November 17, 2007, ministers agreed to seek the authorities to continue the APF programs for up to an additional year, starting April 1, 2008. This has made and will continue to make for a smooth transition to the growing forward program. It will provide certainty to farmers and enable them to have the voice they deserve in program design.
The first business risk management program under the new package is available under the growing forward program. It responds to farmers' demands for programs that are simple, responsive, predictable and bankable. We all know that too many of the farm programs in the past have been none of those things.
In December 2007 federal, provincial and territorial governments signed agreements to launch a new suite of business risk management programs to replace the Canadian agricultural income stabilization program, the CAIS program. The CAIS program simply did not work well. The replacement programs will come into effect for 2009. They are much better programs in many ways.
Based on input from farmers, part of the growing forward program that sets the new policy framework for Canada's agriculture, agrifood and agri-based products industry includes the AgriInvest farmer accounts; AgriStability, an improved margin-based program; AgriInsurance, which includes crop insurance and production insurance and is being expanded to include more commodities; and AgriRecovery, which is a new disaster relief framework.
AgriInvest accounts began for the 2007 program year with a $600 million initiation program on the part of the federal government. That is being delivered as we speak today.
I want to talk about some of the other programs our government has put in place to help farmers build a stronger agriculture sector for the future.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced that 233 research projects across Canada would receive over $22 million in federal funding as a result of an external peer review of research proposals for 2007-08. Four review panels dealt with plant science, animal science, environment and ecology, and food science. The panels, composed of 38 expert scientists from organizations outside Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, used preliminary evaluations from 330 external experts.
These are some of the things our party has done in the first two and a half years.
When it comes to the livestock sector, in particular the cattle, hog, and elk industries, there are some serious problems today. Our government and our party have done a lot in these areas as well. I am not going to go through the list, because I can see that I am not going to have the time to do that, but these industries have certainly been affected in a very positive way by the programs we have put in place.
In spite of that, it has been a very difficult time. Since 2003, when the BSE problem led to closed borders, the cattle industry has been having serious problems. Other sectors as well have been having serious problems over a long period.
I want to talk about one program that is both an agricultural and an environmental program. That is the biofuels program.
Only six months ago people around the world were saying that we should not be investing money in the ethanol and biodiesel sectors. They were saying we should not be investing money in research to help these sectors develop because food is simply too expensive.
It is true that food is expensive at the supermarket, but the cost of the food supply in Canada is lower than the cost in any other country on earth. Only about 13% of what Canadians spend is on food.
That is a remarkable achievement, but we have seen food prices and commodity prices in agriculture drop quite dramatically over the past couple of months. They have been affected directly by the financial and economic crisis we are in today. Farmers have probably felt this crisis as much as, or more than, anybody else. For example, just six months ago farmers could have contracted canola for $17 a bushel. Right now they are lucky to get $9 a bushel, so we can understand the hit that farmers have taken because of the economic crisis. That is one example.
It spills over to every sector of the economy, and I recognize that. It has made things more difficult, although the grain sector is still very profitable in spite of that.
The high input cost is of great concern. One thing we have to watch in the House is that those input prices for fertilizer, pesticides, and that type of thing go down in response to the pressure on the economy, because they certainly should.
Those prices should drop along with the prices of natural gas and oil. They should drop, but we have not seen much of a drop yet. I am certainly hoping we will see further declines before spring. With declining prices and with those commodity prices at the level they have been this year, that is critical. Farmers simply are not going to make a go of it under those circumstances.
I will mention one final thing in relation to agriculture, the Canadian Wheat Board. I was delighted to see it mentioned in the Speech from the Throne.
The agriculture industry has been a consistent driver of the economy. It has created jobs on the Prairies and elsewhere across this country. Our farmers have worked tirelessly to develop a truly remarkable industry that is competitive with agriculture industries anywhere in the world. They have done remarkable things to make it work.
However, governments of the past have put in place roadblocks that really hamper the ability of certain farmers to make a profit and to make the marketing decisions they expect to make.
The Canadian Wheat Board monopoly is one of those roadblocks. It was put in place during the war under the War Measures Act, not to get a better price for farmers, just the opposite, but to drive the price down so government could buy grain from farmers for the war effort. Farmers accepted it at that time. Some kind of restitution was to be made but it never was and a lot of farmers at the time were upset. However, this is 2008 and we still have that monopoly in place.
Our government has committed to give farmers choice. I want to make it clear that our government has always believed in a strong Canadian Wheat Board, and we still do, but we believe that farmers deserve the same type of choices in marketing that everyone else deserves and enjoys. We simply want to give farmers the choice to market through the Wheat Board, if they so choose, or to market without going through the Wheat Board monopoly.
I am looking forward to the day when I have that option. I sell wheat, barley, canola, peas, lentils and other types of commodities. Other farmers produce them for me because, as a member of Parliament, I certainly do not have time to do that. However, I pay my portion of the inputs and I get my portion of the returns. I am looking forward next year, hopefully, to being able to choose to market through the Wheat Board or not. I believe I will continue to market some of my wheat through the Wheat Board but I at least want the choice and I may well choose to market some outside of the Wheat Board monopoly as well. That is all we are talking about.
I want to mention one other thing that affects not only agriculture but a lot of other sectors as well, and that is internal trade. I want to talk about Alberta's premier, Ed Stelmach, who has done a remarkable job in getting together, first, with the premier of British Columbia, and most recently with Brad Wall, the premier of Saskatchewan. They made great progress on eliminating those barriers to internal trade.
I want to mention that I probably was the only critic for internal trade in the history of the Canadian Parliament. I asked Preston Manning, leader of the Reform Party back in 1996, to take on the role of dealing with internal trade. At the time, the Liberal government was putting legislation through the House that was supposed to remove the barriers to internal trade. It is very weak legislation but it did pass. It was a first step. However, not enough has happened since, I am so delighted that our government, with the provinces, has taken on removing the trade barriers, which is something that must be done primarily by the provinces.
However, good leadership from the federal government can help remarkably and that is what our government has provided, along with premiers like Brad Wall, Ed Stelmach and the premier of British Columbia. This will move across the country and we will all be better off for that.
When I was trade critic, I heard from more than half a dozen businesses that because of barriers to trade between provinces they were going to move their head offices to the United States because if they operated out of the United States they would have easier access to all of the Canadians provinces. That is a remarkable type of situation, unbelievable in a country that has signed up internationally to the free trade agreement and to NAFTA.
I again thank my constituents and the hundreds of volunteers who helped out during the campaign. Their contribution is a service to our country. They do a remarkable amount of work and are to be commended.
Finally, I want to thank my wife and my five children for helping me and for sticking with me through 15 years in federal politics. It has been a truly great honour but, as you know, Mr. Speaker, it is not a job that is easy on our families. From the bottom of my heart, I thank my wife Linda and our five children for the commitment they have made to my job as well. This is not only a commitment made by members of Parliament but our families as well.
