We've given this a lot of thought. When you mentioned moving the capital gains exemption to $1 million, it wouldn't really do a whole lot for some of us as farmers, because we are in urban areas, where the inflation of land prices has far exceeded that amount and has become a major challenge for us. These family farms have been in families for generations.
We're not trying to escape paying the capital gain on the land. If you should decide to sell the farm, or if our family members decide to sell the farm down the road, they will be faced with paying the capital gains exemption. But we want to be able to give them the opportunity to roll the family farm from our generation to the next generation, which we can do from parent to son or daughter, but not from one sibling to another.
Coming here today, we are hearing quite often now that it is becoming more and more challenging for young farmers to actually get started. Our concern right now is dealing with the family issue, but another step or thought for the future may be to look at it within a broader spectrum, particularly for young farmers who want to get into farming and have an opportunity to do so, or who have a link with an existing farmer, a dairy farmer or whomever. The government could maybe encourage or entice those farmers into selling to a young farmer who has a long-range plan and a commitment to farming, by either reducing that capital gains tax or eliminating it altogether, making it attractive for the farmer who currently owns the farm to move the farm towards the other side.
We really didn't want to get into that, because we know that with government, sometimes when you bring too many issues to the table it complicates things, and we wanted to stay on track with the family issue. I say this because in Stan's case and in my case, as a dairy and cranberry farmer, the capital of the quota, the capital of the land, and all of those things have just soared through the roof, as you are well aware. For us to continue these family farms under these current tax rates... In the event of my brother passing away, his estate is willed over to our children. But the tax bill for us was almost $2.5 million before we bought the last piece of land. That is a significant amount of money.
As we said earlier, farm gate values bear no relationship to the pressures we have been facing from the urban community. It doesn't matter whether you are a dairy producer, a vegetable producer, or an orchard grower—who have the same problem here in the Okanagan—it impacts everybody.
Although the individuals who spoke before you said that doing a number of different things might not be the answer, we still think you do have to look at a number of different issues. You cannot solve a problem with a broad brush and just do one thing.
We have young people out there today, the next generation, who do want to farm. They've picked up two or three generations of information as the families have developed their businesses, and we would hate to see that lost because they can no longer afford to take the family farm over. In our case we are somewhat lucky because we have multiple parcels, but if you didn't have those, you couldn't transfer the land or sell something to pay something off. That farm would be dissolved. It would be over.