38^th Parliament, 1^st Session

Edited Hansard • Number 006

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Agriculture

    The House resumed from October 7 consideration of Motion No. 2.

-         take-note debate on bovine spongiform encephalopathy

[Hansard Page 259]

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC): Madam Chair, thank you for the opportunity to address the House and by extension, all Canadians.

    I want to take a little bit of a different tact in this debate. I want to speak to our cousins in the big cities, those who enjoy good quality food produced by our farmers. We talk a lot about health care and the need for good health care, but those people who sit down to the table every day to enjoy food produced by our farmers must realize how important this debate is this evening.

    I would like to ask those who are in the big cities to give a little bit of an ear to what our country cousins are experiencing at this time. We need the support of those people who enjoy good quality beef and food we are discussing tonight.

    Before I go much further, I want to ensure those who are in the cities that our farmers and ranchers are doing everything they can at this point to survive. In my area of eastern Saskatchewan, Yorkton—Melville, they are trying to get slaughter plants built so that they can butcher their beef and export it to those who want it. They are trying their best to do it but the border is closed. That is what precipitated this entire problem. The leader of the Conservative Party clearly explained why the border closed and how the Liberals failed to address it as they should have immediately. But going beyond that, we need to do more for our farmers.

    We heard members opposite defend the farm programs that they put in place saying in the throne speech that they would do more. They barely mentioned it but they said that they were going to quickly address the BSE crisis. We have had a year and a half for them to quickly address the crisis. Farmers are doing their best to survive, but they cannot hang on any longer and the programs that are being put in place are not effective.

    The average compensation reaching farmers is less than $1,000 and it costs them $500 to fill out the highly bureaucratic forms. They have to hire people to decipher what these forms are all about and they are being caught with virtually no compensation for the past year and a half. That is why we have asked for this take note debate on this whole issue.

    We can talk a lot about this. I was surprised as I talked to people in the big cities, that they do not realize that compounding this BSE crisis is another crisis that has hit the prairies, and that is the August 20th frost that absolutely devastated crops across Saskatchewan. Over three-quarters of the province has had the quality of its crops and yields reduced.

    I was in fields in Saskatchewan this last Thanksgiving weekend. I went into a field of wheat. It looked beautiful. The farmer had cut it down and it was lying in swaths. It was wheat that would normally be used for making bread. I examined it, rubbed it out, and there was absolutely nothing in that crop. There might have been a little bran, but the frost completely devastated the crop. What should have been a good quality crop was virtually non-existent.

    We have the frost compounding the BSE crisis because when the grain crops were not doing well 10 or 15 years ago farmers began to go into cattle, to diversify and do their best. That is why I come back to it. Farmers are doing their best to survive, but they do not have any more options left. The government has created the problem, but it is not helping them solve it.

    I want to explain more about the situation in my particular area. Business people in the City of Yorkton told me they are absolutely devastated. The farm crisis is not just affecting those people who are producing the grain and the beef. It is by extension affecting all of our cities.

    Families that normally would send their children to hockey school, piano lessons or all of the things that farmers do, are not able to do it any more. They are being severely impacted. The businesses in my home town are at the end of their rope as well.

 (1940)  

    This affects people in the cities, but they do not realize it. We have taken for granted a good quality food supply. Therefore, I ask for their support because the government has made this into politics. It says, “Only 2% of the people are in agriculture so we don't have to worry too much about it because 98% of our vote comes from the cities, so we can ignore these people”.

    I am appealing tonight to our city cousins to listen to the pleas of rural Canada for some kind of help and help us put pressure on the government to act. If we do not act soon we will not have that good food supply there. We are going to lose our middle class farmers and corporations will grab hold of that food supply. Let me warn people that at that point it will not be as it is today, where they can count on this.

    Hon. Wayne Easter (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food (Rural Development), Lib.): Madam Chair, I agree with some of the points the member raised in terms of the situation on the farm. It is serious and we have said that. We have been trying to work at that.

    In fact, I had the pleasure of being on the Prime Minister's task force on the future of farming out of which came roughly $6 billion for the agricultural industry and a safety net program. Is it as good as it could be? Improvements can always be made.

    The member opposite tried to leave this impression, and this is one of the troubles that I have with the party opposite. He said that the government said that it did not matter because only 2% of the people were in agriculture. I say to the member opposite, that kind of rhetoric I do not appreciate.

    We care about farmers on this side too. I would ask the member opposite to tell me directly what government member on this side of the House ever said that they are only 2% of the people and they do not matter. We are supposed to be having a take note debate to improve the situation, not get into the falsified rhetoric that the member opposite is doing and leaving the impression that we do not care. We do.

    We put in place the business risk management program. On the CAISP that the member talked about, close to 70% of cattle producers are in fact triggering a CAISP payment. The federal government announced the CAISP special per head interim payment for 2004 for producers of eligible cattle and specific ruminants based on inventories as of December 23, 2003, in order to address the cash flow and liquidity issues. That was one of the programs that really worked. It got the money out to producers in a hurry.

    The program that was announced in May worked well because it was a simple application. Yes, I agree with the member opposite that the CAISP application is terribly complicated and we have to improve it. However, the application in April was a simple program and the returns went out in a matter of 30 days. It was based on inventory numbers. It is not that the government is not doing anything. We have the CAISP. We have production insurance that will hopefully deal with some of those crop problems the member talked about.

    The key point I want to make is that the kind of rhetoric that the member is insinuating, that someone on this side said that farmers did not matter, is wrong and he should apologize to every member in the House.

(1945)  

    Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Madam Chair, let me simply say that if the government cared, if the members on that side cared about our farmers, they would do something about it. Their actions would demonstrate that they care.

    These words mean nothing. They sound so good. However, people who are immersed in the industry, our beef and grain producers, realize that these government programs are not working. They are not delivering the money to them.

    The member is doing exactly what I complained about in my speech. He is giving the impression to our cousins in the big cities that the government is really doing something to solve the farm crisis. What could be further from the truth? That is an absolute falsehood that he would give the impression to the people listening tonight that the government is doing something.

    We would not be having this take note debate tonight if the government had done what it should. I rest my case.