Speech
Minister Strahl speaks on farm income and the solidarity rally on Parliament Hill
Ottawa (Room 130-S, Centre Block, Parliament Hill)
April 5, 2006.
Chuck Strahl (Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Canadian Wheat Board): Well, good morning, everyone, and it's a pleasure to be here. It's a big day here, on the hill, with our very first question period on the heels of our very first throne speech and also, really our first big farm rally here, on the hill today, where farmers will bring forward their concerns and I look forward to hearing from you today and the days to come.
Actually, since I have been minister over the last few weeks, I have travelled to every province, I met with every provincial agricultural minister, I have held 11 roundtables with industry leaders in each province and I have met with over 240 industry representatives and talked and listened to hundreds of farmers about the situation in the country.
This morning, the Prime Minister and I met with the rally organizers today and they have told me again, loud and clear, about the challenges facing producers across the country. The Prime Minister and I met with them. We heard that. We understand of course they have been facing these problems for some time and are increasingly concerned about their current state of affairs.
These problems, as many of them pointed out, these problems have been many years in the making. For the last 12 or 13 years, the previous government has ignored the plight of this country's hardworking farmers. While the rest of the world poured billions of dollars into programming to help farmers and help make transition to support farmers, the previous government stood silent.
When farm incomes plummeted they stood silent. When disaster struck, they had no programs and they stood silent. And when they did act, they tied farmers up in red tape, in silly rules and in programs that they could neither understand nor that they could take to the bank.
Producers need to have a government that supports them if they're going to succeed and I am going to be working with producers to make sure that's exactly what happens to Canadian farmers.
On January 23rd, Canadians voted for change and that change included change in agriculture. I'm going to tell you that we are going to deliver on that change.
Yesterday, the government reconfirmed its commitment to the industry by committing to respond to short-term needs, create separate and more effective farm income stabilization and relief programs and work with producers and partners to achieve long-term competitiveness and sustainability. That was in the throne speech and again, that's a confirmation of how we're going to approach the agriculture sector.
We've also taken some action. The very first thing we did as a cabinet was to immediately start to send out the payments of the 755 million into the grains and oilseeds program, program that the Liberals had talked about but had failed to deliver a single dollar in.
So we have so far over 73,000 cheques totalling nearly 400 million dollars has gone out to producers under that program and I'm please that that money continues to go out. Most of it hopefully would be in their hands in time for spring seeding.
We are working of course to replace the CAIS program. We're making changes to it right now, trying to fix some of its problems so that farmers can actually benefit from the program now, this year, because that program, we're stuck with that program. It's what we inherited. It's what we have to use for this crop year.
But I want to be clear again about the CAIS program itself, the flagship delivery program out of the previous government. We are going to replace that program with separate income support programs in a separate disaster relief fund. And I would urge farmers, and that's the message I've heard loud and clear across the country, it's a message I heard from farmers and farm groups everywhere. But I want to be clear to the farmers that when I meet with provincial agriculture ministers, without exception, all ten of the provincial agriculture ministers support the CAIS program right now. If we're going to get a speedy change to that program, because it's a federal, provincial program, I'm going to need more cooperation from the provinces to make that speedy change and I would urge farmers who believe, as I do, that the CAIS program is not the right tool, is not working for them, they need to bring pressure to bear on their provincial governments to tell them that program is not working. Let's get to the next generation of agricultural programs and let's do it now.
I urge farmers to send that message, if that's what they believe, and I think it is, to their provincial agriculture ministers.
I understand that problems in the agricultural sector won't be solved simply by throwing money at it. Governments can help farmers but it's really the marketplace that can help them to prosper and this is a global situation, an across Canada situation and it's going to require both international and national market oriented solutions.
That's why my cabinet colleague, David Emerson, our National Trade Minister, held a WTO roundtable discussion with myself and major farm groups last month to develop our priorities and focus on the World Trade Organization negotiations that are moving forward this month in Geneva.
Later this month, I will be travelling there with our negotiators to get those subsidies down, those international subsidies down in an attempt to level the playing field because our farmers, when the field is level, our farmers can compete with anyone in the world.
I can assure you also that this government stands by supply management, which underpins thousands of family farms here, in Canada. I voted to stand up for supply management in November when the motion was before the House, when I was in opposition, and I was to defend supply management now that I am in government.
Je voudrais être très clair. Nous allons.
I want to be clear. We will support the supply management system at the WTO negotiations and we also express support for supply management at our convention last year in Montreal and we also expressed that support during the election campaign.
That is the one sector of our agriculture that has been profitable and we're going to make sure that it stays that way.
But the real answer in the long run and farmers and farm groups have told me that again this morning, the real answer in the long run is not government subsidies. Farmers don't want subsidies. They don't want handouts. They don't want to farm the mailbox, as they say. They want and deserve to make their living for their children and their grandchildren and themselves in the marketplace.
And the solutions that we will bring forward in the days ahead will continue to develop programming and strategies that are going to address things like access to capital, and getting farmers more involved in the production chain so they can get more value out of it.
I'll be rolling out our bio-fuel strategy in the days ahead and I'm working with Environment Minister Ambrose to ensure that farmers actually benefit from our commitment to 5 per cent bio-fuels. This is going to be a big part of, especially for the grains and oilseeds sector in the days ahead.
We want to create an environment that would allow our agricultural producers to make a decent living from the market and enjoy future prosperity. And I believe that finally, and I just came from the caucus where I would say half of our caucus is involved directly or indirectly in the farming business, we finally have a government that stands with our hardworking farmers, their families and their communities. Farmers are our people. We will support them and we're going to make sure that the current situation, which is unacceptable to all of us in our government, is fixed as soon as possible.
We will stand with them, we will support them and they can count on it.
Questions?
