Madam Speaker, I am really pleased to have this time today to respond to our question about why the Prime Minister would say that we are to judge him by the cost of food in grocery stores. We heard nothing tonight about why he has failed to impact that cost for Canadians.
I want to focus on agriculture. Agriculture is huge in my area, and I had a call yesterday from a farmer. We played phone tag all day because there is a two-hour difference. He was out on the field and I was doing my thing. Finally, later in the evening we connected, and he said he was out in the combine; he was still combining. His crop is canola, and he said things were pretty good and that he could make it, but there is a thing called Chinese tariffs on canola, peas, fish, seafood and pork in Canada, and they have caused the price of his product to drop to where it is not what he needs to cover the cost to move forward with his farming into the next season.
The farmer said that he needed to buy his fall fertilizer, but the government has made buying fertilizer more difficult. There are tariffs on the fertilizer he needs for the next season, and he said that he was sitting there wondering whether he should purchase it knowing that he will probably not have the amount of money he needs for inputs and knowing that, if he did, he would have no guarantees. He was sitting there wondering what he is supposed to do.
As a farmer, I can tell members that what they heard tonight about farmers is true. They are resilient. They are creative. They are innovative. They are the reason we have zero tillage and have had it for over three decades while the rest of the world is just figuring it out. That farmer's circumstances are bad, and what did the government say it would do to help in light of the tariffs from our own nation and from China? It is going to give him a loan.
More debt is not what our farmers need. What farmers need is for the government to not continue to penalize them in every way possible, whether it is with increased tariffs or telling them they have to use less fertilizer. By the way, the government wants farmers to have higher yields so they can feed the world and help out with additives to gasoline. We have departments challenging each other's purposes, and our farmers are stuck in the middle.
I really felt for that farmer. He is facing productivity challenges that he should never have to face, beyond the weather and all the other challenges our farmers face, from his own government. He is calling on the government to please stop interfering with his ability to grow his crops, feed his own family and feed the world. He does not want to face the stresses of a government that brings forward damaging policies.