Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on this BQ opposition motion to discuss the problems facing producers.
First, I want to mention the number of producers in the Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel riding who are affected by the mad cow crisis. Some 233 dairy producers and 254 beef cattle producers are affected. These dairy producers represent about two-thirds of all such producers in the Outaouais-Laurentides region, and are located in the Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel riding. Cull cows are clearly a serious problem for these dairy farmers. As for beef cattle producers, nearly one-fourth of beef cattle production in the entire Outaouais-Laurentides region comes from the Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel area.
It must be noted that many dairy producers are also beef cattle producers. The minister was unaware of this aspect of the whole problem. He recently admitted, within the past few days, that there was a problem in Quebec.
There is obvious pressure too from producers. We know that today and over the next few days in Quebec City, all Quebec producers are attending a convention. My colleague from Champlain mentioned this earlier, and this is the purpose of the motion introduced by my colleague from Montcalm. These producers would have liked to hear from the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. Time was set aside on the agenda for him to speak.
It suits the minister to have a Bloc Quebecois opposition day today, because it meant he did not have to go to Quebec City. That is the result. There is no other way to interpret it. It takes an hour to get there by plane. This morning, our leader offered the plane he had reserved to go to Quebec City. He did not want to take it. There would have been enough time for him to return to the House to make his own speech. Clearly, the minister did not want to face the producers, because there is unrest.
The fact is that families are losing substantial income. They could lose their farms, and some farmers are even contemplating suicide. Obviously, these are terribly difficult human situations, and the federal government is part of the problem. In the past 18 months, it has not been part of the solution, but rather part of the problem.
Let me explain why the government is part of the problem.
Since 1993, when the current Prime Minister became the Minister of Finance, assistance to producers was cut in half by the federal government. This means 50% less farm assistance under the Prime Minister, when he served as the Minister of Finance. Already, it was clear that it would not take much of a crisis at all to destabilize the whole agricultural system.
That is what happened. There was this lack of assistance and support for agriculture. Then came a crisis, a single cow in Alberta, and the whole dairy and beef production industry in Quebec was disrupted.
We can tell ourselves, first, that, as part of the problem, the federal government failed to convince the Americans to reopen their borders as soon as possible.
Solutions have been put forward. From the outset, the Bloc Québécois suggested in this House that the principle of regionalization should be applied. I have a hard time understanding how the minister can tell us today, “Look, this is hard. We cannot do it”. It has been done. It was even done to us by the Americans. It was done in the chicken crisis. Instead of penalizing the entire U.S. industry when a case of avian disease was reported, adjoining states on the American side were penalized. As a result, four states were affected by the Canadian embargo, not all of the United States. That was done. The problem is that the government refuses to regionalize.
We have to understand. Geographically, Quebec is 5,000 kilometres from Alberta. Quebec is further from Alberta than Mexico is; yet Mexico was not the least affected by this crisis which some viewed as a North-American crisis. At least, that is what we have been told by the Americans. But Mexico was not affected, while all of Canada, including Quebec, was. That is right. Quebec was affected in spite of the fact that it is geographically further than Mexico from Alberta.
This is where the difficulty lies in such a large country. The government wants to find Canada-wide solutions, but is not ready to admit that, when one territory is hit, the others should not necessarily be, because the trade relations are much more north-south than east-west oriented, especially in the beef industry.
Thus, if there was one case in Alberta, they should have been able to make the restrictions apply to the Alberta province and leave the rest of Canada to do business with the Americans. This would also have considerably lowered the costs for Canada, because, if there was a problem in one industry, in one province, we could have used all the money on the table to invest it in that province only. This is what regionalization would have permitted us to do.
The farmers in that province would have been compensated for all their losses until the problems were settled and business could resume with the United States, for Alberta in this case. The money to do it would have been available.
The problem we have today is that the whole country is penalized, and the government says that it spent billions and billions of dollars. We did not come up with these numbers. They come from the Union des producteurs agricoles, which says that of the $366 million announced by the minister for Quebec, only $90 million found its way into the farmers coffers.
It is all very well to serve up fine speeches to us in the House, but we have some good examples of federal government waste. One need look no further than the gun registry, and how good it is at wasting money on administration.
What happened between the time there was $366 million and when the farmers got $90 million? That will no doubt require an Auditor General's investigation. Nonetheless, only $90 million got to the industry in Quebec. Today, as we speak, that means $241 million the industry lost.
If the federal government wanted to be fair, it would therefore announce an investment of $241 million in Quebec to compensate for what has been lost so far, along with a program to fully compensate for losses until such time as the problem with the Americans can be solved and the borders reopened.
That will take six months at best. There are time limits, negotiations, appeal processes, and according to the debate my esteemed colleagues have held in this House, it will be six months, minimum. That does not mean that the Americans will accept what is proposed to them. So when the process is begun, it will take six months to get an answer, but this does not mean the answer will be yes. This is why the government needs to immediately put compensation in place for the producers, until such time as the U.S. market is fully reopened.
Obviously this is likely what has spooked the minister today, the fear of not being able to tell Quebec producers that they would be getting full compensation for losses sustained to date and to announce an assistance package until the U.S. borders are fully open again.
This leaves us, of course, with a minister taking refuge here in Ottawa so as not to have to go and face the farmers of Quebec, and try to solve their problems. That would be too hard to do.
It is difficult for the people watching us debating this issue. It is also difficult for the farmers who have dedicated their whole life to their farm. You know them, of course. Last year, the majority of milk and cattle producers suffered humongous losses. They are now going under. It is not easy. Agricultural revenues have never been lower in the past 25 years.
That is what the minister wants to talk to us about. He is proud to have contributed to the fact that farmers, men and women who gave all their time to the agricultural production of Quebec and Canada, lived through the worst year, had the lowest revenues last year, in 2003, of the past 25 years. Is this what the minister is so proud of? For my part, I am not proud of the minister and I am not proud of the Liberal government.
I hope they will understand once and for all that these surpluses belong to the public. The public needs them today. All we ask of the Liberals is that they introduce a true compensation program for the farmers of Canada.