A question for my friend from Niagara West: Schedule 30, Protecting Farmers from Non-Payment Act—I’m curious as to if and how that will benefit any of the farmers in our region of Niagara.

Yes. Amazing, eh, and I only have nine and a half fingers to count, too.

We’re not opposed to folding three into one, but we need to be assured that we don’t miss anything and that we ensure that people are protected, because you don’t want to be the farmer who finds out that, oh, while we were folding these three acts into one, we missed this. You don’t want to be that person. Maybe that’s never going to happen. Quite frankly, I haven’t had time to research it enough. Quite frankly, I’m probably not qualified to do the full research on these three acts. It’s going to take a lot of legal expertise to make sure this is all right. Hopefully the government has the horsepower and they have done this. Maybe this act, schedule 30, is perhaps an improvement over the three other acts. I hope so.

Interjections.

Speaker, I apologize; I should be talking to you. I should be, and then I wouldn’t be heckled by the government. But I don’t mind the government’s heckling.

Interjections.

If you really want to help farmers—and you talk a lot about farmers in this bill. I just finished talking about the risks in farming, how prices go up and prices go down, and sometimes the prices are below what the cost of production is. That’s very bad, because as the members well know, agriculture is one of the biggest job producers in this province, and the foundation of agriculture is the production that comes from the farm.

We disagree on one thing a lot lately: We think that we have to maximize our available farmland, the government doesn’t seem to want to talk about farmland, but regardless, the production is important. The fact that farmers need to be able to make a profit from that production to stay afloat and to keep producing—there’s nothing that a farmer wants to do more than grow things, but they have to be able to make money doing it.

The one thing that this government could have done and has chosen not to do is lift the cap on the Risk Management Program. That’s actually what the commodity groups have been asking for and repeatedly asking for. I don’t know one commodity group who has actually specifically asked for schedule 30.

Perhaps four years ago—my uncle Ernie would know that. They haven’t asked for it within the last few years, but they have asked for risk management repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly.

But, right now, the markets are so volatile that an increase in the Risk Management Program would be an incredible benefit not just to farmers but to the province.

I will quote someone who I have a lot of respect for. He was the former Minister of Agriculture.

The one thing with risk management is if you have a risk management program that isn’t capped, that isn’t prorated, you can go to the bank and say, “I have insured my crop—not just the insurance to grow the crop, but I have insured my crop that I will get a minimum of”—whatever the number is—“and that will cover the loan.” That’s the way it was done originally. When the agricultural groups and the government actually worked out the program, that’s how it worked.

It wasn’t the current government that capped it. It was the previous Liberal government. The previous Liberal government created it as well, and they capped it. So I’m not criticizing this government for capping it; it was the Liberals before. And just to be clear—

Interjection: 2011.

Interjections.

Interjection: The member should correct his record.

Interjections.

I do believe that the Conservative official opposition voted for the Liberal majority governments at least 50% of the time.

Interjections.

Interjections.

But getting back to the bill, Speaker—they’re trying to get me off topic, here. There are a lot of schedules in the bill. Again, we will go through them. We will look at each of them and vote on the bill depending on its strengths and weaknesses. That’s how the official opposition should look at every piece of legislation. That’s why often—and the government hasn’t done it as of late, but we’re worried they might do it again—sometimes they put a piece of legislation within a piece of legislation basically called a “poison pill.” And it’s not unique to this government, but this government’s got some great examples.

One of their broadband bills, which we fully supported, had a piece of legislation in the middle about an MZO for, I believe, a protected wetland in Ajax—was it Ajax?

Interjections.

I have 32 seconds left. I thank you very much, Speaker, for your indulgence, and I will wait for questions.

I very much enjoyed the comments from the member for Carleton, especially on schedule 30, and I really enjoyed the comments this morning from the minister on the same schedule, and also the comments from the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane on that. I come from a farming background, even though I’m currently a city slicker, living in Toronto for many years. He explained a lot. The member from Timiskaming–Cochrane said that farmers don’t like politicians and lawyers—which I’ve been both of—and engineers, and that’s what my father was. Also, I think he mentioned that he only has nine and a half fingers, which is a common farming injury, which I share in our family. I have my 10 fingers, but my cousin is missing a half.

Anyway, I know that farming is a financially very risky business, and the member was talking about schedule 30. Could she tell us how it will improve, if passed, farming in her community and how it will help the farmers?