Wayne Easter

[Food Safety, November 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should know the difference between an audit and a review. It was an audit that was called for to determine the number of inspectors needed and how many facilities each inspector should be responsible for.

Canadians want confidence that inspectors are in place to do the job. The government has denied Canadians that right. Sheila Weatherill demanded the audit because she clearly had no more confidence in the government than we do.

Just what is it that the minister does not get about his responsibilities for food safety?

[Food Safety, November 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food demonstrated his word is meaningless when it comes to food safety issues.

While he originally committed to implement all the Weatherill recommendations, the minister has now admitted the government has never done the critical audit called for in the Weatherill report.

That report called for a third party audit of CFIA inspection resources which includes an examination of how many plants each inspector should be responsible for.

Why has the government not acted on this key recommendation? Is it because it could show government neglect on food safety?

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, November 17th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the minister's previous answer makes a mockery of so-called putting farmers first. Not only are Canada's livestock producers in serious trouble, but there are added problems in the Interlake area of Manitoba and Saskatchewan for both cash crop and livestock producers facing lost crops, ruined pasture land, and swamped feedlots.

The minister has turned his back on farmers in trouble. Those farmers require assistance. Will the minister act today with dollars? Farmers need action, not excuses by the organization's bureaucrats in Ottawa.

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, November 17th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food continues to fail farmers, especially those faced with market and weather turmoil. Beef and hog producers are being driven into default by unrealistic repayment terms on emergency advances. These repayments are being demanded by the government itself.

The minister stated when introducing the emergency advance that payments would not be required until such time as prices improve. Prices have not improved substantially. Farmers cannot afford the government's demand. Why is the government breaking trust with farmers?

[Atlantic Agricultural Hall of Fame Inductee, November 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today in Canada's Parliament to congratulate Urban Laughlin of Sherbrooke, P.E.I. on his induction into the Atlantic Agricultural Hall of Fame.

No one is more deserving, given Urban's lifetime dedication to bettering the livelihood of family farms. He has always spoken truth to power, be it with the 4-H, the Federation, Junior Farmers', or his long career with the National Farmers Union. He attended the founding NFU convention and has been present at all 40 conventions since, a feat made possible through a team effort with his wife Mary on their dairy and mixed farm operation.

Mr. Laughlin is the most principled farm leader ever in standing up for policy dedicated to farmers and against compromise that could undermine the family farm.

He quotes Frederick Douglass, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them...”.

Urban challenged those oppressors, fought for cost of production, and is a passionate voice for social justice. Canada needs more Urbans.

We congratulate Urban.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks made by my colleague because he certainly has laid out many of the areas of wasteful spending by the government.

The amount of money that is spent on consultants and the increase in the cost of the PMO was mentioned earlier. However, something that really goes unnoticed, and I would like the member to comment on this, is the size of the cabinet. Most Canadians could not name 10 cabinet ministers because everything is run out of the PMO, the man who says, “I make the rules”. They are all full-fledged cabinet ministers, with their drivers and their full staffs. I do not know what some of them do, but it is certainly a cost to Canadians.

Could the member comment on that? Also, how could that $6 billion tax cut to corporations, when we are already below the United States, be spent better with wise decisions?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the Canadian Wheat Board, being a single desk selling agency, maximizes returns back to primary producers on the moneys that are in the international marketplace. Western farmers support that board.

It would take me too long to go through the list of ways in which the Conservatives have tried to undermine the board, but I will mention what the minister said in this House yesterday.

When the Wheat Board had asked for the initial prices to be raised, in other words, an increase in what we call the interim payments, the minister tried to blame the opposition parties for that taking so long to happen and said it was because we would not support his bill last spring.

There was a problem with his bill. One part was good in that it set a timeframe and Treasury Board would have to respond quickly to initial prices. However, the other part of the bill would have undermined the ability of the board to do its work.

In a letter to the minister, I offered that the bill be split and we could deal with the initial payment part in a matter of one day in this House with tremendous co-operation. If the minister would have acted on our request, farmers would have had that money in their pockets right now.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, in terms of the hog and livestock industry, the safety net program, agristability, needs to be changed so that it will work for those commodities that have lost their margins. It is allowable under the trade agreements. I do not understand it. Last year the government could have put out $900 million to the farm community that way, but it failed to do it.

It is a complicated area, but all the government needs to do is change the viability test and the way the reference margins are calculated. That can be put over three good years, or over a longer period of time, so that it would trigger a payment. That is where the government goes seriously wrong. The government believes that our farmers can do it on their own.

The European Union and the United States stand up for their primary producers. In fact, in the United States, between 1995 and 2009, there was $245.2 billion paid out to the farm communities. The White House this year recognized there was a problem in some of the commodities and recently announced a new disaster aid program, which would cost an estimated $1.5 billion annually. The United States stands up for its farm community.

This government is allowing our farmers to go under. The only thing farmers are coming first in with this government is first in debt. Our debt of $64 billion is roughly four and a half times per farmer what it is in the United States. It is unacceptable.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-47, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 4, 2010 and other measures.

Speaking in my role as agriculture critic, I can tell this House that the budget was one of the biggest disappointments ever for the farm community. There was not a new dime for primary producers in that budget, even though many in the livestock sector were facing the worst crisis that Canada's beef and hog industries have ever seen.

Sadly, the government has become known as a borrow and spend government, with both the debt and the deficit out of control. We heard some of those remarks in the House today with respect to the budget officer.

One of our worries with this Minister of Finance was that he might do to Canada what he did to Ontario. Certainly, this has come to pass. We all know that this minister is more responsible than anybody else for Ontario's fall from a have to a have not province. He cut services, downloaded costs, and drove up the deficit, hampering the ability of the Ontario government to do its job. Now he is doing the same thing to Canada.

What do we have for the farm sector? We have two of the biggest spending budgets in Canadian history, together with the biggest deficit in Canadian history. And what did the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food provide for the farmers in their time of need with all that spending? Zero. Nothing.

The minister claims that he puts farmers first, but the only area where the minister has put farmers first is in the area of debt. Since the government came to power, farm debt has reached $64 billion. That is up $9 billion under the Conservative government's watch. Net income on the farm has gone down, especially in the hog and beef sectors.

We worked with the government. We tried to work with the government to get money to the livestock sector when commodity prices were at an all-time low. For beef and hogs, we actually managed to get a program through; the government committed itself at the time. However, we warned the government that it could not expect the moneys associated with the emergency advance payment program to be repaid until the market improved.

Our worry was that the government would not stick to its word. Now we know it did not. In fact, on August 6 of this year, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food made an announcement in which he basically demanded that those moneys be paid back. The announcement, which was made in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, lays out the terms of repayment.

This is how bad it is. Starting on June 1, 2011, just a few short months away, producers who took the $400,000 advance have to pay that money back in 10 short months. That is $40,000 a month in an industry that is barely able to get back its cost of production.

That was not the original commitment of the Government of Canada. The government assured us at the time that farmers would not have to pay those moneys back until prices improved. Farmers again were given a line.

Now in my province, in Prince Edward Island, I am told by the cattle industry that effective next June or July, as high as 70% to 80% of those livestock operators could find their loans in default. That is unacceptable. The government has to support the farm community and find a way of doing that. I am asking the minister to support the farm community, to not put farmers in the position of where they are in default.

Last night I spoke with a key Prince Edward Island producer. He said that the livestock industry is hurting, especially so in Atlantic Canada. Atlantic Canada is a deficit area in beef production and prices are discounted by 10¢ a pound as compared to Ontario. Ever since we have had BSE in this country, prices for cattle over 30 months are discounted by 20¢ a pound. Producers cannot survive in that kind of regime. They are not getting their costs.

We offered suggestions of things the government could do that would assist farmers in their time of need. In the livestock sector, it could eliminate the viability test. It could change the reference margins and get moneys out there under the safety net program, but there is not the political will. The government has money for everything else. It has $16 billion for untendered airplanes, $9 billion for expanding the jails, over $1.2 billion for the Prime Minister's photo op, but it has no money for primary producers. That is unacceptable.

It is not just in Prince Edward Island. The minister gets up in the House and quotes a farm leader from somewhere. We do know, strangely, when the minister makes an announcement, his office calls up some of the farm organizations and asks, “Could you praise the minister on this a little bit, please”, and then he uses the quotes in the House.

However, when we talk to producers on the ground, we get an entirely different story. Linda Oliver from Mozart, Saskatchewan said that the minister “turns his back on the livestock sector”. She said that approximately 125 producers and supporters at a meeting in Weekes, Saskatchewan sent a message that contradicts that of the Minister of Agriculture. She said that cow-calf producers are in a dire situation. She also said:

However, we, at the same time have to make a living at this farm. We have not been very self-sufficient for many years now because of the lack of response to the situation by the [Minister of Agriculture].

It is just unacceptable that in this budget, primary producers, farmers, the suppliers of food in this country, the people who are really responsible for food security in Canada, who bring in dollars to the country because of their exports, are basically left to wither on the vine. While exports increase, farm incomes have gone down.

Last week I was at a farm meeting at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. There was the same strong message from farmers in financial difficulty, especially in the livestock sector. They asked the government for a risk management program. They asked that at least under the agri-flexibility fund the Government of Canada allow that to be used for the farm program that farmers want jointly with the Ontario government. The Government of Canada has again refused.

On Thanksgiving weekend I was in the Interlake region, and the crop damage there is phenomenal. It is in a quarter section of land of canola. There are well over 100,000 acres of land that have been affected by water damage. Those farmers have said consistently that agristability, the safety net programs do not work. Where is the backbench in the government party? Why are those members not arguing for these moneys and telling the government the concerns of farmers in the Interlake region? Why is the minister not coming forward with a program to assist?

The bottom line is that the Government of Canada has seriously failed the farm community in this country. While the government has the biggest spenders and the biggest deficit, the farming industry has been left with virtually nothing. Those in the farm community are the generators of wealth, but the Government of Canada has failed them.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member for Churchill mentioned in her remarks the mining company Vale. When that company was given the authority to take over a couple of mines, it gave many wonderful assurances.

I ask the question because today seems to be decision day for the future of PotashCorp, a tremendous Canadian resource that seems likely to be sold out by the Prime Minister, who is selling our resources out from under us again. Maybe we will be greatly surprised, but I doubt it. There will no doubt be some conditions put on the sale, but in similar cases, I believe the conditions have been broken.

I am wondering if the member could comment on her experience with other multinational corporations, foreign corporations from around the world, taking over, under certain conditions, Canadian mining companies.