Mr. Speaker, as you know, I am a member of Parliament from the province of Ontario. I want to address this debate and draw the attention of the House to the fact that Ontario frequently gets missed in media discussions of the situation in rural Canada and particularly the BSE crisis. This is not simply a western Canadian problem. This is in fact a problem that is nationwide. We have cattle production across the country from coast to coast.
In particular, it is very much an Ontario problem. To make this point, I just want to give a few statistics. I do not know if people are aware that Ontario is the third largest beef producing province in the country. Beef is very much a large proportion of agricultural production in Ontario. Almost 40% of farms in Ontario are classified as being at least partly dairy or beef farms and sometimes both.
In eastern Ontario, the part of the province that I come from, the proportion would be closer to 50% of farms having either a beef or dairy component. In my own constituency of Lanark--Carleton, that proportion rises to over 60%. Over 60% of the farms in my constituency in Lanark county and the rural west end of the city of Ottawa have either a beef or a dairy component. That is true of the surrounding counties as well. In Frontenac county or Leeds and Grenville county, we see the same kind of pattern. And of course farmers are being affected every bit as much on those Ontario beef farms as they are on beef farms in the western part of the country.
What has happened with the BSE crisis is that it has been the capstone or, alternatively, the straw that may break the camel's back, on top of a whole series of other crises that are being imposed. They are sometimes being imposed by the government itself and sometimes by other circumstances upon our farmers and upon our rural people. As a rural member of Parliament, I am excruciatingly, painfully aware of this.
Let me give some examples of how the crisis is playing out in rural Ontario and some of the factors in it. Right now, rural eastern Ontario is being hit by the reclassification by the provincial Liberal government of maple syrup producers as being industrial as opposed to agricultural, on the theory that the processing of maple syrup on site constitutes an industrial activity. If one were to try transporting maple sap, which has such a small sugar content that it tastes like water, one would realize the enormous impracticalities of trying to ship it anywhere. Plus, it goes bad so it has to be boiled down on site. There is no alternative.
Nevertheless, the provincial government decided that this agricultural activity is in fact an industrial activity. The resultant tax load increase can be as much as 15, 16 and, in one case I have heard of, 18 times the initial tax load for maple syrup producers.
There is also the attack on small sawmill owners, who have been producing perfectly safely in our rural areas for years and years. The accusation has now been made that sawdust on their sites represents an environmental hazard and a hazard to the water supply. I was in Jonquière in Quebec, in Chicoutimi, a couple of years ago, and I went and stood on top of a heap of sawdust that is over 100 years old. This stuff is so inert that it has been sitting there for 100 years. There is actually a sign on it that says if people can figure out a way of getting rid of this stuff for them, let them know. Now the Ontario government has decided that this represents an environmental hazard and a hazard to the water supply.
We have in Ontario the unreasonable requirements for nutrient management that are being imposed upon livestock producers, livestock producers who have been no threat to anybody for years and have established practices that are completely safe. We know this because of the fact that their neighbours are not and have not been affected in any way by operations that have existed for, in some cases, over a century. Now they are being told they must change their nutrient management practices. For those who are urban people, what we are talking about here is how they deal with manure.
I have one farmer, who has a cattle operation in my constituency just outside of Pakenham. He told me that to comply with the nutrient management regulations, he would have to spend a quarter of a million dollars to install a giant concrete holding vat. That is a quarter of a million dollars which he cannot get unless he sells part of his herd, a herd which is greatly reduced in value at the sale barn, meaning that he cannot put in the holding vat for his manure unless he gets rid of the producers of manure, thereby eliminating any need for the holding vat.
The provincial government could deal with this intelligently. It could suspend these regulations, or get rid of them, until the end of the BSE crisis, but it shows no inclination to do that. As we can imagine, this alone will put some of our producers out of business.
When I was at an agricultural society dinner in Lanark highlands, someone from the provincial ministry of agriculture was explaining how the Nutrient Management Act would work for livestock producers. The first question he received from a local farmer was “What do you want us to do once we get out of farming?”
We see that with the Species at Risk Act. This is a federal law that affects rural areas. There is no compensation for the restrictions placed on the use of property, which in some cases render the property or parts of it useless. We were promised this by the government, but it has not been delivered. That again is unnecessary.
Then of course we have the costs and other impositions imposed by the firearms registry, which is now at $2 billion. Thank goodness it is not farmers who have to carry the entire cost of that. Certainly, when we see our taxes going toward that kind of boondoggle with no practical impact whatsoever, with no lives saved or ever saved and, notwithstanding the hon. member who spoke earlier, no stolen weapons returned to their owners, there is a sense in rural Canada that perhaps the government has some misplaced priorities.
What is the appropriate response to the BSE crisis? If we think about it and if we take the cattle and the prions out of it and look at it from a financial point of view, the real point of the BSE crisis is a cash flow problem. Agriculture, by its nature, is an industry in which producers are rich in assets, which potentially have a high value, and foreign cash. By freezing their ability to take their product to the market at a reasonable price, the problem of farmers being cash poor has been exacerbated and has been made far worse than it has to be.
The government's response ought to be to try to, first, ensure that we can do what we can to raise the price of cattle wherever possible. There are a variety of actions, which my hon. colleague has pointed out in the new Conservative Party plan that would deal with this. Second, we have to provide some form of compensation in the short run to ensure that the cash flow crisis does not force many of our producers out of business. That is significant.
Canadian cattle producers are not subsidized. They are independent producers. They do not receive the kinds of subsidies we see being applied to many agricultural sectors in the European Union and in the United States. They function on their own and they stand on their own two feet. However, for goodness sake, if we do not get them through this crisis, many of them will be out of business and it will not matter that they were able to make it on their own under normal circumstances. This is not the thin edge of the wedge toward some sort of widespread and ongoing subsidy program. This is simply helping them get through the current crisis. The government seems to have no interest in doing anything about it.
For almost a year we have seen endless and meaningless hand-wringing from the other side of the House, with no attempt to do anything, and there are so many things that could be done.
Local farmers in my constituency, in particular Pat O'Rourke who came up the idea, and I helped them with this, started producing bumper stickers and lawn signs to remind people to buy Canadian beef. This was back at the beginning of the crisis when there were many imports of beef from the United States. People did not know to look to see if the product they were buying was Canadian. People just assume that everything they buy in Canada must be Canadian since we produce so much beef here at home. We have put up thousands of these signs at this point and distributed thousands of bumper stickers. That has had some impact on raising the awareness of Canadians.
We now find Canadians are aware that they have to think about looking for Canadian product. We now need to increase the production and processing capacity. The Conservative Party plan calls for this. We need to provide compensation.
I hope the members on the government side of the House are listening and that they will take some of the actions that we have proposed today.
