Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House resumed at 8 o’clock, p.m.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD (CONTINUED)

On vote 1702:

Mr. Chairman: When we rose at 6 o’clock, we were discussing item 4. Any further comment on this?

An hon. member: Item 4?

Mr. Chairman: Item 4 agreed to?

Mr. M. Gaunt (Huron-Bruce): Mr. Chairman, I had a number of things here, if I just have a chance to --

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Look; there are no NDP members here.

Mr. R. F. Ruston (Essex-Kent): There are no farmers there anyway.

An hon. member: That’s interesting. I guess we have --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. W. Hodgson (York North): The member for Riverdale.

Mr. Ruston: The expert farmer; he doesn’t know what a tomato looks like.

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Chairman, I want to raise a matter here in relation to the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association and the various special projects it undertakes, most of which are certainly worthwhile and directed toward practical tests. The projects, as I understand it, have increased in number over the years, and I think, by and large, many farmers get a great deal of benefit out of information derived from these particular tests.

One thing that concerns me, and I would consider it a retrograde step, Mr. Chairman, is connected with the Seeds Act. This is a federal Act, but I do know that the ministry here and the people in the branch do make recommendations from time to time with respect to this particular Act, as in all other areas. I just wonder whether the minister has the same view that I hold with respect to this particular matter.

As I understand it, there was a change in the Seeds Act, I think just this past year. That change applied to winter wheat last fall and to spring grains this spring for the first time. It concerned the varieties of grain that farmers buy, the commercial variety for seed purposes.

As I understand it, previously farmers could go in to a seed house, ask for a bushel of Garry oats and be assured they were getting a bushel of Garry oats. Now when a farmer goes into a seed house and he asks for a bushel of Garry oats, he has no idea whether he is getting Garry oats or not, if he buys commercial seeds. He may be getting 50 per cent Garry oats or he may be getting 25 per cent. No one really knows. The only way that he can be sure is to buy certified seed, which cost roughly 50 cents more per acre.

Now he can buy that, he can buy certified seed, he can grow the variety on his own farm and then turn around next year and use that for seed. Or he can buy seed from his neighbour where he is sure of a specific variety. But if he goes into a seed house and asks for a commercial variety, there is absolutely no guarantee that he is getting the variety he wants.

It may very well be that Stormont oats do better on his farm than Garry oats, or vice versa. But if he buys the commercial variety he has no guarantee that he is getting either one.

Frankly, I think that’s a backward step. The argument on the other side of the coin is that the seed houses would sell the more popular varieties and eventually run out of them. If the farmer came in asking for that variety and they didn’t have it, the seed house would simply tag another variety with the tag requested. Certainly, that’s, in my view, a dishonest practice and I would say that it should have been pursued. But that’s the argument given for undertaking this particular procedure.

Quite frankly I think that it’s wrong. I don’t think that it’s a forward step and I’d be interested in getting the minister’s comments.

Hon. W. A. Stewart (Minister of Agriculture and Food): Well Mr. Chairman, what the member says is correct. I also recognize the fact that the Soil and Crop Improvement Association, a very much an autonomous body, have really been pursuing this. I suppose many members of the group are registered seed growers.

The point raised by the member for Huron-Bruce has been under discussion with the Soil and Crop people some time and was a matter of debate between Agriculture Canada officials and the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association for a number of years. They finally resolved the matter by -- I don’t have the details of it here because it was a matter that was resolved at the producer level -- saying it would only be registered varieties that could be named.

I suppose that a lot of it goes back to the fact that in the past, there have been people who have been boggled into thinking they were buying a specific variety with whatever the name might be -- it could be barley or whatever -- and in fact it wasn’t that specific variety in the commercial field. It could have been something else, and was in some cases.

So the registered seed growers, believed it not to be in their best interests that a particular variety they were growing could be misidentified and downgraded by somebody saying it was a particular variety of commercial grain when it really wasn’t, since then the person who had bought and grown it would be quite disappointed and could downgrade the particular variety in the estimation of other farmers. There are two sides to the coin, and frankly it was a matter that was determined by members of the Soil and Crop Improvement Association.

Mr. Chairman: Is there anything further on item 4?

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the minister about the rabies indemnities. Have they been adjusted recently as to the amounts?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Yes, I have the figures here. Effective Feb. 1, cattle were raised to $500; horses, $350; swine, sheep and goats were left at $100.

Mr. Chairman, I have the answer to a question that I was asked. I told the member I would get the answer. It was in relation to crop insurance agencies. The 150 agents are paid $10 per contract plus 30 cents for the first 200 acres; 20 cents for the next 200 acres and 10 cents thereafter. I’m advised that the average per contract is $30. This requires the agents to visit the farms about three times during the year.

Mr. Chairman: Is there anything further on item 4?

Mr. Gaunt: Just while we’re on the matter of answering questions, Mr. Chairman, I’m wondering if the minister was able to get the information back on the second vote with respect to the transfer from administration to extension? I asked about that.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Would the Chairman like to go on?

Mr. Chairman: Is there anything further on item 4? The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. Ruston: We discussed this before the supper break for a minute. I was looking over public accounts. I think the minister had stated that tax rebates were $18 million in 1972.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: What was that for?

Mr. Ruston: I was going over the farm tax rebate. The minister mentioned it before the supper break, if I remember correctly, and he was right in the amount of $18,094,000 for the 1972 year. For this year he has $25 million plus. Some appeals may come about so he is estimating $27 million.

In effect, we’re now paying 50 per cent instead of 20 per cent, so going on the basis of the 1972 year, it would have been $36 million. So we’re down about $9 million. It seems rather strange to be down that much from the new system, although I suppose it is possible with the applications now necessary and the necessity to have at least $2,000 of income to be eligible to obtain the 50 per cent rebate.

When one looks back, hindsight is better than foresight, it shows that the other system just wasn’t working too well, as was mentioned by the auditor, because it was very difficult to keep tab on. But it’s interesting when you compare the two that way with public accounts.

Mr. Chairman: Is there anything further on item 4?

Mr. J. P. Spence (Kent): Mr. Chairman, on this grant under the Drainage Act, I might say the minister is well aware of the skyrocketing prices of plastic tile in the Province of Ontario. So of course with the high prices, unfortunately one is not able to buy this plastic tile, and in many cases clay tile. I wonder if $3 million is sufficient in these estimates to take care of that, because we find it costs now as high as $300 in order to tile an acre of land.

It is practically out of reach of the farmer to afford this amount of money. I wonder if the minister has anything to say in regard to the supply of plastic tile for the agriculture industry in 1974?

We know this spring was such a wet season farmers couldn’t get tile in order to tile their land. It has been a great disappointment to those contractors who have bought new machinery -- tiling machines at $100,000. It is going to practically put them out of business if there isn’t sufficient tile to take care of the farm needs in this province. I wonder if the minister has anything to say with regard to the supply of tile and the unreasonable price it has reached in the Province of Ontario at the present time.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: You mentioned the tile situation. As far as I know, it is all right. As you know, the wet weather this spring held up some of the drainage work and they couldn’t operate. There are some new plants coming into production in Ontario and there appears to be abundant supply of tile for drainage at the moment.

Did the member ask about the costs of tile drain?

Mr. Spence: Yes, the costs.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I understand that plastic is about 23 cents a foot and clay tile about 14 cents a foot. This is a substantial increase over other years.

With regard to the $3 million in grants under the Drainage Act, those are one-third grants under what used to be the old Municipal Drainage Act. The loans under the tile drainage debentures -- those are the municipal debentures -- for tile drainage on individual farms are at the bottom of that page. The amount is $5.4 million.

There are two different things. I would think there likely would be an abundance. We have underspent in that particular grant to tile drainage in the past, so I would think the $3 million would be ample. If it isn’t, we will have to ask for more. But we think it is sufficient.

With regard to the question asked by the member for Huron-Bruce, the reduction is due to the transfer out of administration, to assistance to primary food producers; and that is under the grant section for capital grants administration and also for agricultural manpower. That has been transferred out; the amounts are $142,000 under agricultural manpower and capital grants; inspection and clerical checking are about $252,000.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Welland South.

Mr. R. Haggerty (Welland South): Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the minister a question dealing with the farm tax reduction programme. Is the landlord who has 100 acres of land and leases his land out for agriculture purposes entitled under the farm tax reduction programme?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I am not sure whether I heard the hon. member’s question.

Mr. Haggerty: Can the owner of the land who leases the land out for agricultural purposes collect under the farm tax reduction programme?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: It depends on the type of lease. In some cases the landlord pays the taxes. Then he can collect, providing there is the appropriate amount of agricultural production on that farm and the taxes are paid the same as if he were doing the actual farming. In some cases the tenant pays the taxes and he then could qualify for the tax reduction. Whoever pays the taxes gets the rebate, providing he meets all the other criteria.

Mr. Chairman: Item 4.

Mr. Gaunt: On grants and subsidies re livestock of $132,800; I know that the ministry does support various programmes in relation to livestock and testing and so on, I just have one little item I want to mention here. It was an item that was mentioned in the brief of the Ontario Farmers’ Union and it actually involved the Ontario Beef Improvement Association check-off.

It was mentioned that that check-off was very difficult to get, and as the minister knows it’s an automatic check-off. The thing is done automatically unless the producer requests a refund. The suggestion was that, even if the request was made for the amount to be refunded to the producer, there were things that were placed in the way that didn’t make it very easy to get the money back.

I remember when we were discussing this bill in committee mention was made that this could be the case. But this is really the first indication that I have had from anyone that it was rather difficult to get the refund back even if one applied for it. Has the minister checked into this matter at all?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That point was raised by the Farmers’ Union and we were surprised to know that there was any problem there. I asked our staff to get in touch with the Ontario Beef Improvement Association office, because there certainly should be no hold-up whatever. The Act was passed on the clear understanding that anyone who applied for a rebate would get it, whether it was on one head or 1,000.

They have, I think, spelled out that it was every three months that one could apply -- I think it is every three months. That seems reasonable. But there should be no problem whatever in getting that rebate. I think the problem was that there were perhaps one or two sale barns that weren’t paying into the fund, or hadn’t paid their obligations to the fund. They said, “We won’t pay the farmer because he sold his cattle through that sale barn, and that sale bam didn’t make the rebate to us, so we are not going to pay it.” As far as I am concerned that argument is right out the window. They pay it, and then it is up to the OBIA to collect from that sale bam, and we will do our best to help them collect.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Kent.

Mr. Spence: Under what vote does this heading, the Food Council, come?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: 1704.

Mr. Spence: 1704. That is this vote then? The next one? Right. I am sorry.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Wellington-Dufferin.

Mr. J. Root (Wellington-Dufferin): Yes, Mr. Chairman, I see an item of $10 million for capital grants. Is that $10 million available for this year, or is part of that a carryover from excess applications last year?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: No, Mr. Chairman, that $10 million is for this coming year. Last year as you know we announced we only recovered $10 million, but we found enough funds out of other areas within our ministry to pay for every application that came in prior to the end of the fiscal year -- it was $18.4 million. I think I mentioned $18.5 million before supper, but it was $18.4 million. Every application that was received in the last fiscal year has been paid, so we start off with a clean sheet.

Mr. Root: One other question. I see $210,000 for a development in northern Ontario. What type of development would that be?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Those grants are made available to the agricultural committees in the north for a variety of reasons. They make their own decisions as to what they want to use them for. They can be for fences, for limestone, for fertilizer, for digging of wells -- that’s the kind of thing. In each district the local committee decides what it wants to use its grants for and then we just simply make them available to it -- $210,000 was set aside and divided among the various districts in northern Ontario.

Mr. R. D. Kennedy (Peel South): Mr. Chairman, if I could just take a moment to introduce students from Pembroke Senior Public School in the absence of Mr. Hamilton -- who as you know is chairing the social development committee and can’t be with us -- and their teacher, Mr. Leslie Scott, in the west gallery. I am sure the members join with us in welcoming them.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Welland South.

Mr. Haggerty: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I want to go on to the subject of the Ontario Junior Farmers Establishment Loan Corp. I understand that in the past this has been a very successful programme. I was just wondering about the new programme that the federal government has coming into effect very shortly -- the Farm Income Stability Programme, I guess it is.

I noticed in one of the newspapers the article “Special Loans to New Farmers” which is under the federal loans, and I wondered if the minister in this crisis -- perhaps you might call it a food shortage in the Province of Ontario and throughout Canada -- would not move back into this junior farmers’ loan programme? I think it has been a good programme in the past and should be continued today to bring in new young farmers and give them some hope of establishing farms in Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Chairman, I am a bit concerned about that myself. As a matter of fact I have the latest propaganda issue from Agriculture Canada for the election. It is entitled “Agriculture Highlighted in Speech from the Throne” -- a delightful piece of work --

Mr. Gaunt: I thought you would be out with Stanfield tonight.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I have read this with some interest, because you see it relates to young farmers, and I am told that there are going to be changes in the Farm Credit Act, which will do just what my hon. friend suggests should be done.

But, you know, I would have liked to have got the byline credit for that, because we were very much impressed with the necessity to do something for those young farmers who graduate from our agricultural colleges and some other places and who would like to get into farming without obligating themselves to an enormous debt in order to get started.

As you will recall in last year’s debates here, Mr. Chairman, I suggested to you that we were going to recommend that our government get into the field of providing farms for young people; we would buy farms as viable going units and then turn them over on a long-lease basis to these young farmers.

As you know, we have meetings with the federal Minister of Agriculture -- I was going to say, on a regular basis, but certainly quite often -- and among our conversations with him, when he was talking about bringing in some of this legislation, I suggested that the Farm Credit Act should be amended to do just this. He thought that was such an excellent idea that I understand he was going to do it; but, by jove, it wasn’t done. And I don’t know why it wasn’t done, because it’s such a good idea.

Mr. Haggerty: Ask Stanfield. He’s the one who wanted to call the election.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: No, it wasn’t. There were all kinds of opportunities to bring in that Act and’ have it on the statutes without any trouble at all.

Interjection by an hon. member.

An hon. member: No, it was not.

Mr. D. C. MacDonald (York South): They were too preoccupied with the World Football League.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Well, of course. It seemed to be more important --

Mr. Ruston: The bill was printed. It was --

Hon. Mr. Stewart: -- to deal with the football situation in Toronto than it was with the young farmers.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: However, I am delighted to know that that’s what is going to happen. Now, with that in mind, we simply didn’t embark on the programme; we took it out of our estimates for this year. It’s as simple as that, Mr. Chairman. We had it in. And I have no notion of running a competition, with a couple of lending agencies doing the same thing.

Mr. MacDonald: Why not? Why not?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I just don’t think that it’s good business. I recall the days when my friends in the opposition suggested that there should be one lending agency in this country. We agree with them; and this is what we are doing.

Mr. MacDonald: We’ll get to that a little later.

Mr. Chairman: Item 4? Carried.

Vote 1702 agreed to.

On vote 1703:

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, I said we could get to that a little later, but perhaps we can get to it right now. Are we on vote 1703, agriculture rehabilitation and development?

Mr. Chairman: Yes.

Mr. MacDonald: The minister said he’d like to have had a byline. He knows he could’ve got a byline. All he needed to do was to take it himself. If the federal government and those awful Liberals won’t move, then we should fill the vacuum. However, I am anticipating the general comments that I want to make. I’ll come back to those in a moment.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. MacDonald: During my introductory comments to these estimates, I quoted to the minister a reply that he wrote to a 29-year-old prospective dairy farmer in Leeds county who was wondering what assistance there might be available in the provincial government to get into dairying, particularly at a time when there is an urgent need to increase milk production. I put on the record the minister’s reply, which was a slough-off to the effect that if you can get yourself hired out as a labourer working for some farmer who is ageing and ultimately is going to get out, perhaps you can get a foot in the door and ultimately get control of his farm, and thereby fit yourself into the picture that way.

I asked the minister then -- perhaps he has replied to it in my absence; if so, I apologize -- but I asked how he equated that reply in February of this year with a speech he made in March when, speaking in St. Thomas, he made the comment that it may well be that we have got to start to produce our dairy farmers.

I wondered exactly what the minister had in mind when he talked about developing new dairy farmers, because I suspect the day is not too far off when precisely that will have to be done in the Province of Ontario if we are going to have enough milk to meet not only the top-priority needs of bottled milk, fluid milk and specialties, but milk and powdered milk and all the other items that are getting short-changed because of the increasingly short supply of milk.

Tied in with that, I want to bring in another point. I want to try to relate two or three points, Mr. Chairman, and get the minister’s reaction to them. Two or three years ago, when Mr. Olson was the Minister of Agriculture, the federal government brought in a programme which was known as FARM -- Farm Adjustment and Resource Mobility plan -- under which the federal government was planning to devote some $150 million to help small farmers get off the land -- I repeat, get off the land. That produced such adverse reactions across the country that it was renamed the small farm development plan, which is an interesting switch, and presumably the federal government was going to play some role in trying to encourage small farmers to stay in operation and, conceivably, to become big farmers. That is a second point in the general picture.

Related to it, I remind the minister of something that I drew to his attention last year, when Dr. Richards did his study of the reorganization of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. In his report, on page 18, he pointed out: “There is likely to be an increase in the number of part-time farmers -- particularly in areas close to cities and towns.”

If I may interrupt myself, I think there are roughly 50 per cent of the farmers in the Province of Ontario today who are part-time farmers, working in industry or the neighbouring village or the neighbouring town, partly because they have to do that to get a supplementary income and partly because it may well be that they are seeking to get into full-time farming but they haven’t the capital requirement to be able to move in.

Dr. Richards commented: “A trend where some farmers are not obtaining sufficient income to adequately meet their needs will probably continue to increase. This is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the ministry in rural Ontario over the next decade.” I repeat, the biggest challenge, to do something about the part-time farmer who is either supplementing his income because he has no alternative or who is trying to fit into agriculture and has to do it in easy stages.

Dr. Richards continues: “The development and updating of government policies will be required to effectively deal with the marginal farm operator and low-income rural dweller.” I am a little curious to explore with the minister what is being done in the Province of Ontario on this level. I know we have an ARDA programme and I know that this federal-provincial project is designed in part to rehabilitate rural economies, partly in the agricultural sector and partly in other diversified economic activities which might help to bolster the economies in the rural areas.

But the thing that has caught my fancy -- and I suspect it is as valid in the Province of Ontario as elsewhere -- is that in many other provinces they have come to the conclusion that they cant count on the federal government doing this job alone. I go back to pick up the comment of my friend with regard to the junior farmer loans. The Farmstart programme in Saskatchewan and the Stay Option programme in Manitoba are programmes which are designed to diversify the economy, to provide an option for people to stay on the farm if they wish to stay on the farm, to fill the gap between the credit potential that is available to a farmer from the FCC, but only after he has really got established, because he hasn’t got the capacity to meet the payments to the FCC.

What the Farmstart and the Stay Option programmes do is to make it possible, through more generous provisions, for a farmer to get into the picture and to develop a capacity to cope with what I would describe as the traditional federal farm credit possibilities. I want to suggest to the minister that this has to be done in the Province of Ontario.

If you want young farmers to get into agriculture; if, for example, you really were saying something substantive rather than just a bit of political rhetoric, that the time may come when we have to develop our own dairy farmers, then it seems to me that we have to have a programme that will assist dairy farmers in getting into the picture and being able to become established in dairying. They can’t do it through FCC alone. That may assist after they nave developed a certain potential.

I happened to share an open-line programme with George McLaughlin down in Belleville about two or three months ago. and I was rather taken aback at the number of people who called in on that open-line programme and spelled out the impossible difficulties that they were facing in terms of getting enough income from dairying to be able to stay in the business -- in other words, to avoid becoming one of the 2,100 dairy farmers who are going to get out in the coming year as they’ve got out in the past year.

But even more important, I am concerned how they might get into the business -- how we can develop our own dairy farmers, to quote the minister himself. My point is simply that there seems to be a whole area here in which we should be concerned -- both in the interest of the overall economy of the province and in the interest particularly of the rural economy which has tended to deteriorate because of the exodus of population.

Let me hasten to add that I don’t take the Farmstart programme in Saskatchewan and the Stay Option programme in Manitoba and say “Here’s a model, just apply it in the Province of Ontario.” I know the conditions are different. We, for example, don’t have as massive depopulation in the rural areas as they do out in western Canada. An awful lot of our urban folk who are living or working in urban areas close by are going out and living in the country. So we have the reverse process of people who are willing to live in the country. By their taxes they help to pick up and share the provision of services, but in a western province, when a farmer moves out, nobody else moves in. You’ve got one less farmer to pay for all of the services that are required in that rural area.

But we’ve got a comparable kind of problem here and we need a comparable kind of programme. I have seen no indication of the government looking down the road a bit. As I said in my introductory remarks, we should be looking beyond the end of our noses and beginning to plan to cope with these problems rather than just engaging in a bit of political rhetoric in connection with it.

The reason why I raise it and elicit, if I can, from the minister some reaction to the need for such a programme is this: I am convinced that five or 10 years from now, it is going to cost us millions of dollars more to get people to go back into agriculture than it would cost us now to persuade people to stay in agriculture.

I was at a farm meeting a few weeks ago, and a man made a comment which I thought was -- well, maybe I had heard the same thing in a different way before and it hadn’t quite registered with me. But his point was this: a farmer is really a professional. He may not have the same degree of educational qualifications, though many of them have gone to Guelph or to Ridgetown or to Kemptville or elsewhere, and they’ve got some degree of educational qualifications.

Mr. J. Riddel (Huron): A much higher degree but only self-educated.

Mr. MacDonald: You’re stealing my punch line. What I’m saying is that the farmer is a person who is a jack of all trades who has skills which he has acquired in the school of hard knocks. He is able to do a thousand and one things that many city folk, quite frankly, haven’t got either the experience or -- I almost hesitate to say the initiative --

Mr. Haggerty: The knowhow.

Mr. MacDonald: -- or the knowhow to be able to grapple with it. When you take a farmer out of his rural atmosphere, where all of those skills can be used, and you move him into the city, it is really an incredible social and economic loss. All of those skills are not available there, when it becomes increasingly obvious we need to produce more food. You move him into the city where he may have to be retrained, where he gets into competition for a new house in a market where there is already too much competition. You have social losses from his leaving the rural areas, and you have social costs in terms of moving them into the city.

It seems to me it would be plain common sense for the minister to go to the Management Board or to the cabinet and say: “Let’s just take a look at this picture in terms of the next five or 10 years,” The odds are that five or 10 years from now we’re going to be spending tens of millions of dollars to persuade people to get back into agriculture -- to persuade the small farmer to develop into a bigger farmer -- instead of having policies that are calculated and publicly and openly designed to eliminate the smaller farmer, and to discourage people from getting out and staying on the land.

I might sum the whole thing up, if it isn’t too offensive, and I plead with the minister not to be offended by it: When are we going to develop Ontario’s equivalent of the Farmstart programme in Saskatchewan or the Stay Option programme in Manitoba? Surely the evidence of the need to keep people on the land instead of having them driven off by economic circumstances, combined with the need for getting more and more people to go on to the land in a couple of decades from now, is strong enough to justify the working out of such a programme now? I’d like to believe that even if he went before the Scrooges of the Management Board they would recognize that in the long-term sense a few tens of millions of dollars there would be money well spent.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: It’s an interesting proposal. There is no question about that. I must confess that with my hon. friend from York South I share much of his support of the validity and merit of that proposal.

Mr. MacDonald: It’s too bad the minister doesn’t have a cabinet which shares it with him.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: We’re not sure that the programmes they have in Saskatchewan or in Manitoba would work. We feel it’s worth an effort and we thought the federal government was going to do it.

Mr. MacDonald: Adapt them then.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I’m convinced it is. I have the minister’s word that’s going to be done in the amendments to the Farm Credit Act. It would seem to me that’s the place where it should be done and we’re told that it will be. I have hopes that the hon. Mr. Stanfield, when he forms the next government, will simply pick that idea up and implement it and we’ll have it right here in our country.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: I thought the minister was boosting Gene Whelan.

Mr. I. Deans (Wentworth): The minister has a commitment from him just as he had from the Liberals.

Mr. MacDonald: I hope Stanfield has clearer ideas.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: We have no doubt that is such a valid reason that we will have that programme implemented forthwith after July 8.

With regard to the programme of developing our dairymen, I think if my hon. friend would read that in the context in which I intended it -- and I don’t have the speech before me -- I believe I was talking about dairy farm labour. By that, I mean the people who would assist in the dairy farms of Ontario. I’m pretty sure that was what I said; certainly that is what I had in mind. I don’t have the speech before me. Suffice it to say that we do seem to have a sizable number of dairy farmers. The great problem of many of the dairy farmers we have is that they are going out of business because they can’t find the labour to work on the farms. I think that is what I referred to.

Mr. MacDonald: They can’t get the income.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That’s true. That’s one of the reasons and, of course, the long hours is the other problem.

Mr. MacDonald: If they had the income they could hire the labour.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: This is why the smaller dairy farms are having very great difficulty. The larger dairy farms which have sizable numbers of cows and large incomes can afford to have enough help to switch them around and give them regular shifts. They don’t have to have them there seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year, with those long hours which are required to be put in on a dairy farm.

I think, as I have said many times in the past I believe, the dairy farm of the future will be the kind where there is sufficient involved labour on the farm, either as partners or as stable labour which wants to work on that farm. I don’t think the small dairy farmer is going to be inclined to stay in business as we would all hope he might. Certainly a great many of them have embarked on other courses and there would appear to be pretty good logic in that, in the last few years, particularly with the higher values of cash crops.

The matter was raised by my friend from across the aisle in regard to a letter I had addressed last Feb. 7; I remember the letter very well. I went right back to my office and asked them if they’d pull the correspondence to Rodger Haggett. I remember the letter very well but my hon. friend didn’t read the letter he had addressed to me.

Mr. MacDonald: I haven’t got a copy of it.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I have a copy of it and I think my hon. friend would be interested to know that Mr. Haggett advised me that he owns a Supertest farm and fuel supply business. That is a sizable business to own. I think one takes that into consideration; here is a chap who was an established businessman in the community, with a thriving business, asking us to start him up on a farm without any effort at all or any indication that, as indicated in this letter, he would) put money into the venture himself.

I think that we were well advised to suggest to him that there are ways and means that a fellow can get started). I have to wonder just how a man could start in a business and own a retail gas business and farm distribution business but not have enough to start into farming.

I could have drawn out a long answer to him and told him a lot of things, and I suppose that he wouldn’t have been any wiser than he was, rather than simply telling him that if he was interested enough to get started in farming he could start the way that I suggested he might. I know of many very successful farmers in this province who have started just the way I suggested. They are in business and they are doing extremely well today. I can name several of them, right off by memory, that I know personally.

I understand that this young man has sold his farm business and he is, I believe, living on a farm. As a matter of fact I have asked that our staff go and see him and talk to him. If we can be of any help in getting him started up, all well and good.

Mr. MacDonald: You have done that since I raised the issue?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Yes, that’s right. Because I found out that he has sold the business. We are going to see what we can do. There are no funds available as far as we are concerned but perhaps through some type of an ARDA farm agreement, I don’t know whether we can do anything for him or not; but at least our extension branch will have a chat with him and see what can be done to assist him if he intends to farm and if he is really serious about it.

I am not going to jump off the deep end and run around the country trying to assist some businessman, who has already got a good established business, in trying to get established as a farmer. I tell the member that quite frankly. If I did, I think we would be less than sincere about trying to help those who are already in business.

I would say, Mr. Chairman, that we are very hopeful that the federal government’s programme will do what my hon. friend suggests. Frankly, I think there is a need for it in this province. I have thought that for some time and I would like to see it embarked on. As for the small farm development programme as introduced by the federal government, I don’t think it has ever got off the ground in Ontario, quite frankly. It may have had application in other provinces. It may have been conceived with an idea of being of use, but it just hasn’t worked) out in Ontario. It’s had no application here.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, can I just finish this? The minister’s political schizophrenia is what gets me.

One moment he is deploring the Liberals at Ottawa and their unwillingness to do what is necessary to do and so on, and the next moment he is, in effect, expressing faith that they ultimately will get around to the job.

My point is simply this: If the minister wants them to get around to the job, he should tackle it himself --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. MacDonald: -- as was done by many other governments across this country, in Quebec, in BC, in Saskatchewan and in Manitoba, in tackling a rural problem. If the minister takes the initiative that may help the federal government to recognize its responsibility. If it doesn’t help the federal government to recognize its responsibility, at least he is tackling the problem and not copping out. That’s my criticism of the minister. Too often he cops out and says the federal government should do it. Perhaps they should, but if they don’t, and it’s a problem that is worthy of being tackled, he should tackle it himself.

I don’t want to argue at any greater length the case of Rodger Haggett, I’m at least interested to know that the minister went back to his office and drew the correspondence and found out. His explanation now is that the man was a businessman and he wasn’t going to help him to get into farming.

The minister didn’t indicate that in his reply. The essence of your reply was, I quote, “To my knowledge there is no financial assistance available to start either a dairy farm or any other kind of farm operation.” That’s the point I am speaking to, not Rodger Haggett, because the minister replied to him in a generalization: “There is no financial assistance available.”

All I am saying is that to decelerate the deterioration in the rural economies, to help to build rural economies to keep people on the farm, to avoid the social loss of them leaving rural areas and cramming into the cities, where we have got too many people already, it is money well spent to have a programme that will keep them on the farm and, indeed, to encourage those who may be in business or may be in any other walk of life, to get back into agriculture.

It takes me into this, by way of a final comment, that the whole kick of the agricultural economist in recent years is to say we have got too many small farmers and we really have got to get rid of them.

The whole thrust of the farm income report was we had X number of farms in the year 1960; by 1970 it is going to be a proportion of X, and by 1980 it will be reduced again. This is a general line with agricultural economists. I want to suggest to you that there may well be good economic and sociological reasons to take a healthy second look at that process of chasing people out of the rural areas, even though they may be engaged in small farming. It is far better to keep them out there rather than add to the social and economic problems you have when you cram far too many people in the urban areas, as has been the case in the last 10 or 15 years. That broad kind of policy halts this mass exodus from the rural areas into the cities, and tries to keep diversification in our economy and a more even spread of our people across the province, along with industrial development and other kinds of economic development to maintain them in those areas.

Mr. J. A. Taylor (Prince Edward-Lennox): What are you suggesting?

Mr. MacDonald: I am suggesting that Ontario put them into the Farmstart programme or the Stay Option programme.

Mr. Taylor: It doesn’t mean a thing.

Mr. MacDonald: What do you mean it doesn’t mean a thing?

Mr. Taylor: Come out with some positive or concrete suggestions.

Mr. MacDonald: I am suggesting if the minister says he wants to develop dairying that he have a policy to encourage people to go into dairying and that he not slough them off because he finds that he is another business.

Mr. Taylor: Everybody knows the problems, but can you come up with some good solid solutions? What do you do? Why can’t you come up with something that is constructive?

Mr. MacDonald: My initial comment when I led off in these estimates was there is one man who can reconcile the conflicts in rural Ontario between all the farm groups because he knows what the problems are, and that one man is the Minister of Agriculture and Food.

Mr. Taylor: He knows about them.

Mr. MacDonald: But the Minister of Agriculture and Food has to look beyond the end of his nose in terms of shaping the policies that will meet these problems. I am not going to take the time tonight to enlighten my friend from Prince Edward-Lennox as to what the answer is.

Mr. Taylor: You won’t enlighten me because you don’t have the answers.

Mr. MacDonald: I have got the answers. In fact my colleagues out in Manitoba and Saskatchewan have worked out a programme. What I want is to have this Minister of Agriculture and Food work out a programme. Not the same kind of a programme; don’t let me leave for one moment the suggestion that I want a general application of something that applied to western Canada, because the conditions are different.

But the fundamental problems are the same. If this minister -- I would like to believe this -- had a government that was really interested in agriculture and was really interested in rural Ontario other than as a place to capture votes and maintain the political power base, then the cabinet would take the initiative and would support him.

Mr. J. M. Turner (Peterborough): You are the one making the political speech.

Mr. MacDonald: It would push him into it and the Management Board would provide the funds for doing it, because it would be money well spent.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I hate to let those comments pass without some loud and modest reply. I would like to suggest that neither Saskatchewan nor Manitoba has had anything like the kind of ARDA programme that Ontario has had. As a matter of fact, the ARDA programme in Ontario is a model for all of Canada, and it has been held up to other provinces as the way it should be done.

In Saskatchewan they embarked on a Farmstart programme, true enough. I have read the history of this thing and I have discussed it with Jack Messer out there. Even though he is Minister of Agriculture in a socialist government he has a few decent ideas, I think, and I listened to him.

Mr. MacDonald: He has got a few bright ideas.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: He is very interested in what we are doing ARDA-wise. As a matter of fact, he sent his people here to see how we structured our marketing because he thinks so much of it.

Mr. MacDonald: Sure.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: They haven’t all the answers in the socialist government. I just wanted to suggest to you that in the ARDA programme we have in Ontario we have leased out 1,950 farms to help enlarge farms that are next door to keep fellows on the land and give them the land that establishes and helps to establish a more viable agricultural unit for those people who otherwise might get discouraged and leave the farm. That’s what we have done under this programme of ours.

We have something going for us. I would also suggest that when one talks about the farmers leaving the land in Ontario, I think you have to recognize the fact that there are an enormous number of young people who are going back to the farms and are farming.

Mr. Haggerty: They need help financially.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: For instance, of the graduates from the agricultural colleges that we operate, last year and this year over 50 per cent of the graduates went directly back to the farm.

Mr. MacDonald: Sure, agri-business is overstaffed.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: In 1973, 20 per cent of the graduates of OAC went back to the farm, and 30 per cent have gone back to the farm in 1974. Those figures are there for all to see. To me that indicates that there are some highly skilled and qualified young men who really understand farming going back to the land.

And so, when I hear my friend across the aisle preaching doom and gloom about the farm population leaving the farms of Ontario, I think you have to recognize that is what is happening here.

You see, one wonders, with great respect, when my hon. friend from York South talks about the great excellence of the Saskatchewan programme. The average number of acres that they’ve leased back to people is 186 acres; the average lease that we have is 153 acres. Now, in a comparison of Ontario and Saskatchewan, we are miles ahead in regenerating the viability of land because of the type of land we have.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s only one aspect of the farm programme.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Well, that may well be one aspect of the programme.

Mr. MacDonald: The other is to incorporate programmes equivalent to the junior farm loan. Instead you are copping out and waiting for Ottawa to do it.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: We’ll get it done, as I suggested to you. Mr. Stanfield will be implementing this right after July 8.

Mr. Ruston: No way!

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Now you know that that is the kind of confidence that I have. I have that kind of confidence that that will be done. Now I don’t want to be political, Mr. Chairman, not at all.

Mr. Gaunt: I am sure glad he smiled when he said that.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: So I feel that we are on the right track; and it’s going to be done -- I haven’t any doubt of that at all. But I appreciate my friend’s comments over there and I can assure you that something will be done. There’s no question about that at all.

Mr. Riddell: Bill, you surely can’t say that with a straight face?

Mr. Gaunt: Sure, lower your prices on the farm.

Mr. Ruston: How can you have price and wage controls --

Mr. MacDonald: Wolfe Island’s agriculture has been neglected too.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Kingston and the Islands.

Mr. C. J. S. Apps (Kingston and the Islands): Mr. Chairman, although I come from a riding that is mostly urban, I do have some very good farmers on the two islands in St. Lawrence -- Amherst and Wolfe Island. For the most part they are very appreciative of the help that has been given to them in the various programmes that the Minister of Agriculture and Food has inaugurated over the past several years. There’s one problem that seems to be cropping up, and that is they have very great difficulty in raising the money to expand their herds and to expand their farms.

Mr. MacDonald: We have been saying that for years.

Mr. Apps: All right, just a minute. I am the first to admit I don’t know anything about farming, but sometimes out of the mouths of babes something comes which may be of help. And why couldn’t a programme be worked out along the lines of the help that is given to small businesses by the Ministry of Industry and Tourism? I mean farmers are businessmen. Some of them are small, but some of them are larger businesses.

Mr. MacDonald: Precisely the Manitoba Stay Option programme -- it provides the money.

Mr. Apps: But surely to goodness, we could work out a programme for the farmers throughout the province that is similar to the help that is given to small manufacturing businesses.

Mr. MacDonald: And do it provincially; don’t leave it for Gene Whelan.

Mr. Apps: This would enable them to get the necessary money in the form of loans -- they could be deferred interest loans -- to enable them to buy the stock, to improve their buildings or get new facilities, or to buy more land. Defer the interest payments for three, four or five years until their herds get filled up and the money starts coming back in.

Mr. Ruston: You’re stealing his stuff, Syl.

Mr. MacDonald: Right on, Syl. Come over and sit on my right. It is too bad you are out of the cabinet.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Apps: I’ve listened to the member for York South and I am very patient; please let me expand on this in my own way. I think there are thousands of smaller farmers throughout the province who would take advantage of similar types of loans and the help that is given the small businesses by the Ministry of Industry and Tourism. It would enable them to get the capital that they need to expand their production. As I say, to increase their herds and buy new and better machinery or new and better barns and milking facilities.

Mr. MacDonald: You might even sneak in forgivable loans.

Mr. Apps: I am not talking about forgivable loans. They are not interested in forgivable loans. They are interested in getting money at a reasonable rate of interest, maybe deferred. Because as you know, you can’t build a new building, get a lot of additional cattle and start reaping the benefits all at once. It takes several years before you can do this. So if they could get a loan with a deferred interest rate -- like we are giving the small industries as at present --

An hon. member: We are giving it to them, yes.

Mr. Apps: I think that would be a tremendous help to them and I am sort of passing that out to you --

Mr. MacDonald: That is the Farmstart or Stay Option programme.

Mr. Apps: -- as maybe an idea worth pursuing or worth working out with the Ministry of Tourism and Information.

Mr. MacDonald: Just great. Bridge the gap until they can cope with FCC. Dead on, sir.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Root: I listened with great interest to the spokesman on agriculture for the NDP talking about --

Mr. MacDonald: Go on. You are just going to activate some more sludge.

Mr. Root: -- looking down the road. Six years ago when we were debating whether we’d have a 48-hour week and you people and the Liberal Party wanted a 40-hour week, I said we haven’t developed cows that will stop milking Friday night and start back on Monday morning and you ridiculed me.

Mr. Deans: That is right, because you deserved it.

Mr. Root: You said, “Try that horse-and-buggy policy in the next election and see what happens.” I’ll tell you right now that I tried it and I took more votes than your man and the Liberal and the independent combined.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Root: You are talking about agriculture and I have a rural riding.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Mr. Root: You are the asphalt farmers over there. That’s why you don’t have any people elected in rural Ontario and that’s why you’ll not have any people elected in rural Ontario. Maybe the millstone your party hung around Trudeau’s neck was why he didn’t get into this farm loan programme we’re talking about. Your policies make it impossible for many young people to stay on a small farm. You can’t operate a farm on a 40-hour week, you people recommend and you talk about even less that that.

The young people today are getting the same education in the country as they can get in the city. They ride the buses and they can figure; if they can get a job with unemployment insurance and all the benefits that go with a factory, how do you keep them on the farm? Money is only one thing.

An hon. member: They are only --

Mr. Root: People aren’t going to work seven days a week or milk cows twice a day for seven days a week for less money than people can get teaching school or working in a factory or many of the other industries. My family farmed in Wellington county before the city of Guelph was founded, and we are still farming. I have three boys and only one of them is on the farm; we gave him partnership -- it’s about the only way you can get started today.

Mr. MacDonald: You drove them off.

Mr. Root: I beg your pardon?

Interjection by hon. member.

Mr. Root: Nobody drove them off. They were sucked off by the advantages of working in some other industry; that’s why they are off. I have nephews --

Mr. Deans: Maybe we could improve the conditions for farmers. That’s what we are saying.

Mr. Root: Get rid of your socialistic ideas and we’ll agree.

Mr. MacDonald: Those ideas provided the progressive programmes of the 29th Parliament.

Mr. Root: I have nephews and nieces who --

Mr. Deans: You have reduced this debate to ridiculousness.

Mr. Root: You just don’t want to look at facts.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Root: You want to put the telescope to your blind eye. You know the cost of labour and the short work week, as the minister has mentioned, are factors. There is no way you can ignore it.

Mr. Deans: Of course, they are --

Mr. Root: As soon as beef gets up to $1.50 a pound for steak, you start to holler about that: “Roll the prices back.” I’m telling you, if you are going to keep people on the farms --

Mr. Deans: There has never been an occasion when I said the farmer got too much. Never once.

Mr. Chairman: Order, please.

Mr. Deans: Never once.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Root: Never once, eh? Well, I’ve heard a lot of that around the riding. But let me tell you --

Mr. Deans: Never once.

Mr. Root: -- a farmer has to have capital to start and it takes a lot of capital because now we are bidding for land against wealthy people from the city who can’t get a severance. They buy the whole farm to get the house and they turn it to grass.

Mr. Deans: Or developers.

Mr. Root: No, not developers up my way. They are not developers. You don’t know what you are talking about. You live beside the city.

Mr. Deans: I said, or developers.

Mr. Root: You don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t live in an agricultural area.

Mr. Deans: I most certainly do.

Mr. Root: The city of Hamilton?

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Deans: On a point of order.

Mr. Root: Mr. Chairman --

Mr. Chairman: A point of order?

An hon. member: Sit down!

Mr. Deans: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. I am afraid I must correct the wrong impression of the member. Of course, I live in an agricultural area; I even represent an agricultural area.

An hon. member: But you don’t know what you are talking about.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Wellington-Dufferin may continue.

Mr. Root: Mr. Chairman, I’ll accept that but I think he could do a lot better job of representing it.

All I am saying, Mr. Chairman --

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. Root: -- I agree that in some way we have to keep people interested in agriculture. Finance is only one part of it.

Mr. MacDonald: Except that you are doing nothing about it.

Mr. Root: You have to have a life. You cannot expect people, a man and his wife, to go out and milk cows seven days a week so you can have cheap milk and cheap butter and what you like. Through my area a few years ago we had creameries enough. We don’t produce enough butter to butter our bread.

An hon. member: We have to import it. It’s a lower cost.

Mr. Deans: Because of lack of adequate policy.

Mr. Root: It’s not a lack of adequate policy. If the federal government --

Mr. Deans: Then that is the reason.

Mr. Root: If we could get a government in Ottawa --

Mr. MacDonald: Get a government here, never mind Ottawa.

Mr. Root: All right, just a minute. You know right well that Ottawa controls --

Mr. MacDonald: You get the Liberals in Ottawa to --

Mr. Root: You know that Ottawa controls the tariffs and the products that are coming in here.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Root: And you know that the last government in Ottawa had a millstone around its neck with the socialists hanging on, stopping it from doing what it might have wanted.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Root: So let’s put Bob Stanfield in there and get a government that is interested in developing this country.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Deans: You are the root of all the trouble.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, I’m not going to answer this speech in kind. This is the kind of cheap politics --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: -- by which Liberals and Tories down through the years have set city folk against rural folk, and you can’t get --

Hon. W. Newman (Minister of the Environment): You can’t have it both ways.

Mr. MacDonald: -- any evidence to suggest that the NDP hasn’t been fighting for fair prices for farmers.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. MacDonald: Right, fair prices for the farmers. Yes, you’ll get the Liberals, because they are in the same bed with you over there. And, furthermore, where we had an opportunity we have done more than has been done elsewhere to get fair prices for farmers, and at the same time we have done more to avoid the consumer being skinned by the 80 per cent of middle-men who make up food chains.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. MacDonald: What I am saying to you, Mr. Chairman, and to our friend over there, is that when he talks about farm labour -- you go back and take a look at the farm labour report that was produced by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture along with the Dairy Farmers of Canada. The first recommendation was to give the farmers enough income for them to be able to hire the labour. That’s the desperate plight of the farmer. He hasn’t got the income to be able to compete even with the minimum wage.

Interjection by an hon. member.

Mr. MacDonald: And the answer to the problem is to get him a decent income. If you are not fighting for it, if you are blaming Ottawa on its inactivity, we in the New Democratic Party are fighting for it.

Mr. Root: I’m wondering how to reply. The only kind of farm you can operate under your policy is a corporation-type farm where you have enough labour --

Mr. MacDonald: Nuts. You just don’t know what you are talking about.

Mr. Root: -- to stagger your work hours, and you know it, and I said that six years ago, and you laughed at me. That’s why you are still over there without a farm member. You’ll be there after the next election without a farm member.

Mr. Chairman: I’m wondering, before the hon. member for Huron --

Mr. MacDonald: If you had a few more cattle instead of trucks --

Mr. Chairman: -- commences, if I could draw to the attention of the members to keep to the content of the vote. The member for Huron.

Mr. Riddell: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought it was only on television stations that they gave time out for commercials and free political announcements, so let’s now get back to the programme.

The minister made some comments that I was rather interested in, one of which was the fact that 30 per cent of the graduates from some of these colleges are returning to the farms. That’s really not too meaningful. I would like to know how many of the graduates, say from 1960 or 1965, who returned to the farm have had to leave them because they weren’t able to carry on due to the lack of financial assistance.

Has the ARDA programme been updated at all, or are they still offering $150 an acre in order to purchase land from a farmer who no longer wishes to stay in business, and then they turn around and lease that land out to, say, the neighbouring farmer? Because if we are still toying with the $150 per acre, then we certainly are far below the value of farms selling today, and I just doubt if you can go anywhere, certainly in our part of the country, and get land for less than $500 an acre. Certainly these farmers are not going to be prepared to sell their land at $150, even though they do find that they are up against it, and can’t meet their obligations, whether they have a junior farmer loan or a farm credit loan.

In connection with some kind of a financing policy here, I think we would have to agree that the same conditions don’t apply right across Canada. The problem I am running into involves a lot of new Canadians coming to me, new Canadians who have worked for a number of years, have managed to save up a little bit of money and now want to get started farming. So they start the process of purchasing a farm, hoping they can get a loan of some kind, only to find that the appraisal is done on the productive value of that land.

We know here in Ontario that the productive value and the current market value of those farms are two different things. I mean, lots of these farms are selling at $1,000 an acre, yet we know that the productive value of land is nowhere near $1,000 an acre. The Farm Credit Corp. appraises the land on the basis of the productive value of the land, and the new Canadian finds that he cannot raise enough money to purchase the farm -- let alone the money to have a little bit of operating capital, or invest in some machinery and some livestock.

So I maintain that we don’t necessarily need one lending agency, because the same conditions don’t apply right across Canada. It might be a good idea if we got back into some kind of a financing programme for farmers here in Ontario, where conditions are entirely different than they are in the western provinces.

Mr. Haggerty: The minister has indicated that. There is a difference.

Mr. Spence: Mr. Chairman, before the minister answer that. It is unusual to read in the Ontario Federation of Agriculture’s brief to the three parties in the Province of Ontario that the average income of the farmers across Ontario is $7,600 in 1973. Now this is one of the reasons why, as some other speakers have said, there isn’t sufficient income to keep the young people on the farm. If you are going to produce food which this world needs -- Canada needs food, the United States needs food -- the farmer’s income has to be raised in order to keep the young generation producing food for Canada, or for the world.

Mr. Chairman: Does the hon. minister wish to respond?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: With regard to the hon. member for Kent’s observation on the average income of Ontario farmers as quoted by the Federation of Agriculture, I would have some reservations about the validity of those figures. Included in those figures and the calculations that are done, are the incomes of people who are classified as farmers, but they are really only living in Ontario. Some of them are on Canada Pension Plan; many of them are on some type of pension and earning some kind of living besides -- driving a school bus or working in town, this kind of thing, and doing a bit of farming.

I suppose one can always question figures, but I understand the Statistics Canada figure for the average income for the commercial farmers in Ontario was well over $12,000, net income, for 1973. Which was quite different from that. But that is commercial farmers.

Now with regard to what my friend from Huron asked: How many grads couldn’t stay on their farms? I really can’t answer that. There are none, to my knowledge, who have had to leave the farm because they couldn’t make a go of it.

Mr. Riddell: There are some I know.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Well, there may be some. I suppose that happens in any type of business. But 50 per cent of the grads from the agricultural colleges -- Ridgetown, Kemptville, Centralia, New Liskeard, and the two-year associate course at Guelph -- went back to the farm last year and this year. And 30 per cent of the four-year graduates went back to the farm this year; 20 per cent last year. That is an increase of 300 per cent over what had been going back in years previous, on the average. So that there are some efforts along that line, and I think they are working out satisfactorily.

The price that is offered by ARDA is $150 maximum. It has not changed. Now there is a good argument, and there are valid reasons why it should change. The purpose of the ARDA programme at the time it was introduced was, to some extent, to help farmers who were locked into the situation where they could not sell their farms. Older people were sitting there with land that they couldn’t sell; nobody would buy it because it wasn’t a viable unit. Something was probably wrong with the barns or the buildings, or there were rock outcrops or swamps, or poor drainage, or something was wrong.

We moved in and bought those farms and made the agricultural land available to anybody who wanted to rent it. Today, that concept has changed completely. Those farmers are no longer locked in. There are all kinds of people scrambling to get their farms. If there is rock or a bush on them or a stream on them, they become more valuable than ever. There is no possible way that we can compete with the people buying that kind of land.

We are putting the emphasis now on trying to make use of that agricultural land, the land that urban people are buying, and we say to them, “Look. This land you have got here, now -- you probably don’t realize it, but here are X number of acres on this farm. We’ll try and negotiate with you to lease it to some neighbouring farmer.” That, to me, is using private money invested in that farm, and still making use of the land for the neighbour next door, or somebody down the road, on a long-term lease basis. That, to me, is just common sense. That’s what we’re emphasizing right now.

As far as the evaluations are concerned, I understand that the Farm Credit Corp. bases its values on productive farm lands. If I see farms changing hands between farmers at substantial prices today -- and they are sure able to get their hands on the money, and how they do it, I don’t know -- because I do know that land is changing hands at a very high price, even among farmers in some parts of the province. It seems to me that many of the so-called new Canadians -- people who have been born here and some of whom came here -- are establishing themselves now. They seem to be able to finance these purchases in a way that is quite admirable. I appreciate the recommendation made concerning the farm-credit plan and the suggestions that were made by my friend from Kingston and the Islands. They will be duly noted and taken into consideration.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. Ruston: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just was going to make one or two comments on some of the items we have been discussing here. I have noticed that the Farm Credit Corp. loans went up in the past year by 142 per cent in Ontario alone, and I was also informed by the Minister of Agriculture for Canada that his bill was printed before the Parliament of Canada was dissolved.

One of the recommendations, or one of the points in the bill, was a $150,000 loan for young farmers up to 35 years of age to be paid off on a long-term basis. And, of course, the reason was that a farmer could then more or less start with reasonably good equipment and enough land, and so forth, to get into a viable unit all at once and have something to work with.

As some of us look back and see what we had to work with, maybe 30 or 40 years ago, to get started, it was a pretty tough situation. But, that particular item, of course, as I say, was left on the order paper when the election was called, so I suppose if the member for Huron says we are not supposed) to have any “commercials,” I just thought that I would remind the people here that that was one of the particular items the NDP and Mr. Stanfield’s party voted the government out on.

Mr. MacDonald: Squeezed out by the football.

Mr. Ruston: So, I think that is just and a good point to raise at this time, since someone else has brought it up, too.

Mr. MacDonald: Nonsense. You were preoccupied with keeping the World Football League out.

Mr. Ruston: Getting back to farming, dairying and so forth. You have to make a profit to farm, but you also have to be able to have a time for a little vacation. The member for York South may have got up at 5:30 in the morning and milked 15 cows by himself at some time or other. I don’t think he did, but I did.

Mr. MacDonald: I did.

Mr. Ruston: How long?

Mr. MacDonald: When I was growing up.

An hon. member: Before the member for Essex-Kent did.

An hon. member: By hand?

Mr. MacDonald: By hand, yes.

Mr. Ruston: So did I. But not for very long, did you, Donald? No, that’s right, not very long.

Mr. MacDonald: What does the member mean, not very long?

Mr. Gaunt: They were Herefords, Don. Not very long.

Mr. MacDonald: They were Holsteins.

Mr. Ruston: If you think the people are going to farm and have to work 365 days a year, seven days a week, and be up Sunday morning at 6 o’clock, and dairying and so forth, I think, as the minister has stated, is going to have to be in a unit large enough to accommodate this kind of work. And this is where we are going to have to get loans large enough to help them. Such farms are going to have to be large enough so that they are at least two- or three-men operations.

I know in my own area two or three dairy farms milk 55 to 60 cows. Some of the farms I’m thinking of formed into a corporation, and they have at least three -- either the father and two boys, or in one case three boys, and they are farming under that with about another 75 head of cattle besides that, and in no way can you expect the people to do what they did. I know a fellow who only lives a mile and a half from me who informed me the other day that he has been dairying for 24 years, and he and his wife have never had a holiday in 24 years. You see, people aren’t going to do that any more. When the man in the city can have four weeks’ vacation after 10 years, plus a week’s vacation between Christmas and New Year, plus nine or 10 statutory holidays, and make $12,000 a year without any investment --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Ruston: -- then if we pay a farmer for the amount of hours that he is going to spend working, we will be paying $1 a quart for milk. You know who is going to holler? The first ones are going to be the NDP, because the member for Wentworth and the leader of the NDP spoke here one day complaining and hollering about the price of eggs being 60 and 70 cents a dozen when, dammit, the year before they were 19 cents a dozen and the farmer was losing 12 cents a dozen on them just to produce them.

Mr. MacDonald: You sound like John Root. You are both in the same class. You are both in the same boat.

Mr. Ruston: So you see, it is so ridiculous when you hear them talking on the price. It sounds like --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Ruston: It sounds like the member for Riverdale (Mr. Renwick) the other night. In his stupidity, he didn’t know that a man could go out and pick tomatoes and make $30 a day. He says, “You’re crazy.” I know he is crazy. He doesn’t know what a tomato looks like on a vine in Ontario. He might know what they look like in a store because they can and lock them.

Mr. MacDonald: You sound more and more like John Root. Sound like him, not only look like him --

Mr. C. E. McIlveen (Oshawa): He’s an expert on hot tamales though.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Ruston: Many of our good Canadians look forward to coining down into Ontario to pick tomatoes. I know of three particular people who came down last year and worked for seven weeks. The three people I am thinking of are young fellows about 22 years of age who came down and I talked to them one night --

Mr. Riddell: It is a good back-breaking job.

Mr. Ruston: -- I had my son-in-law with me because they were quite French and I couldn’t talk with them very well.

Mr. MacDonald: You need help.

Mr. Ruston: We had a little discussion and he said, “You know, I didn’t know that money was so easy to make until I got down here and started picking tomatoes.” But I am telling you, you have to know how to do it. I have tried it. I have done it, but I can’t pick them very fast. That is my problem. The thing is to watch people walk up and down the road with one in each hand and the little stems are flying off as they are picking them.

I can’t do that. I pick up a tomato and then take the stem off. If I get 80 baskets a day I am doing good, but those fellows are picking 200 baskets a day with no trouble, but they thought it was great. It so happened that these three particular fellows took off on a trip to California after they made their little bit of money. They came back and got jobs in places where they each made $5.40 an hour and they each bought a car and said, “You know, it is just like money growing on trees.” It is not that good. We know that.

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Haggerty: That is from 6 o’clock in the morning until 10 o’clock at night.

Mr. F. Laughren (Nickel Belt): Nonsense. I have never heard such nonsense in one evening in my life.

Mr. Ruston: Well, they are plain facts. I know right where they come from.

Mr. MacDonald: You are a selective fellow.

Mr. Ruston: That just shows how ignorant you are that you don’t understand what goes on in the country. You have been teaching somebody some place to take it out of a book, but you never got down and found out what went on.

Mr. MacDonald: You are sounding more like John Root.

Mr. Riddell: Stick to the blueberries, Floyd.

Mr. Ruston: I want to say with regard to loans --

Mr. Haggerty: Best friend you have, Bill.

Mr. Ruston: I think this is what we have to do. We have to look at farming and special dairy farming in an operation large enough to make money, and that is why we have to have these loans large enough so that they can be operated with at least three people.

Mr. Laughren: Ruston is alive and living in John Root.

Mr. Ruston: Because no way are people going to work the long hours they did in the past 30 or 40 years. We have to have it. I would hate to see what would happen down in some place like Florida where they have corporation farms and they are milking cows 24 hours a day. Ten or 12 come in on a shift -- on day shifts, afternoon shifts and the midnight shifts --

Mr. W. Hodgson: Do they milk the same cow?

Mr. Ruston: I don’t know. Bill, if they milk the same cow or not. They probably don’t even know them. We used to know them by name, you know. It seems they all look the same colour now.

But, maybe that will come if we don’t look after this other system. That is why we have to look for a system where farmers can borrow enough money so that if a family wants to come in and get into the operation, it can. I am rather disappointed at the fate of the plan the government had in Ottawa to get this going it was a good plan. The minister had stated that he anticipated they would put it in. I am not going to get into the policies of it. I am sure somebody will. But, I think that this minister should be ready to put it in himself this fall if it isn’t put in by the federal government.

Mr. Chairman: Vote 1703.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Chairman, I hadn’t intended to enter this debate but --

Interjections by hon. members.

Mr. Ruston: You are going to get --

Mr. MacDonald: Like you, he wants to milk the issue a bit.

Mr. Laughren: No, Mr. Chairman, to the minister, in Sudbury there is a great deal of farming going on, only there we call it sulphur farming -- whereby the International Nickel Co. of Falconbridge pays the farmer for the crop damage.

Mr. Haggerty: It brings in about $10,000 a year -- 40 hours a week work.

Mr. Laughren: It’s the major part of the income of most farmers in the Sudbury basin. But I’m wondering --

Mr. Taylor: That’s not what the member for Sudbury said last night. He said that most of the men working for the mining companies were farmers.

Mr. Laughren: I’m telling you they make the majority of their income off the farm.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Nickel Belt has the floor.

Mr. Laughren: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am wondering in view of the comments of the member for Wellington-Dufferin and the comments from -- he doesn’t represent the government, although it’s hard to tell -- the member for Essex-Kent, just what the government’s position is on this problem of income for farmers and trying to help them pay the kind of wages that will attract and keep people on the farm.

I sit on the select committee, Mr. Chairman, with the member for Wellington-Dufferin and day in and day out, meeting after meeting, all I hear is how the farmers in the Province of Ontario cannot afford to hire people to come and work on the farm. The member for Wellington-Dufferin uses the argument all the time that it’s because people don’t want to work and unemployment insurance is too easy to get. I’ve never heard such nonsense in all my life -- well, I have -- I heard some more tonight.

Mr. Root: I didn’t say people didn’t want to work. I said if people can make a good living on a 40- or 35-hour week with unemployment insurance, at the other end and all the benefits that go, why would they go and borrow the amount of capital to start a farm and take their chances on frost, hail, foreign markets and all the rest of it? Say what I said.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Chairman, I don’t stand corrected. I have heard the member many times and he never seemed to realize that it’s up to the Minister of Agriculture and Food to determine whether or not the policies are right in the Province of Ontario to attract and keep young people on the farm. If the farmers in this province cannot have an income that is sufficient to pay these people, surely the answer, Mr. Chairman, is not to pay people less in the industrialized sector of our province. Yet that seems to be what the member for Wellington-Dufferin wants, and the member for Essex-Kent.

Mr. Taylor: Tell us how to pay the farmers more.

Mr. Laughren: If you appoint me the Minister of Agriculture, I will lay out all the solutions for you. No problem at all.

An hon. member: I’ll bet you will.

Mr. Laughren: And I might add that if you took the advice of my learned friend from York South that --

An hon. member: Learned!

Mr. Laughren: Yes, learned.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Mr. Laughren: Learned in the field of agriculture, I might add, as well.

Mr. Chairman: Could we get back to vote 1703 and let’s talk on the vote?

An hon. member: You don’t have to live on a farm to know something about farming.

Mr. MacDonald: You don’t need to be a chicken to lay an egg either.

An hon. member: You do very well.

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Chairman, I really do hope that the minister, in view of the good advice he’s had from the member for York South -- certainly better than any of the advice he has had from his own back-benchers -- could indicate to us just what his plans are to prevent this outflow of people from the farms to the city. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, I have a quiet, unprovocative question of the minister.

Mr. Haggerty: Move over and let it pile up.

Mr. MacDonald: I have listened to the minister complain about the amount of agricultural land being taken out of production by city people who go and buy out farms. He seemed to be suggesting that something was in the making by way of a policy but we have had no particular policy.

I know that ARDA provides some potential for buying land and making it available for development of larger, more viable farm units and so on. However, the price that can be paid is limited enough so that, as I gathered from talking to farmers, it hasn’t got the real capacity to get this growing acreage of prime farmland that is being sat upon by urban people. They buy it because it’s got a home on it and they want four or five acres for family recreation purposes and the other 95 acres more or less lies idle.

I mentioned in my leadoff that in the pre-budget briefing that was given to those of us who were speaking on behalf of our parties to the budget, the people in TEIGA said the Ontario Land Corp. was the instrument that could be used to cope with this problem. In other words, the OLC could buy up land that is not being used for prime agricultural purposes and presumably make it available for those who would use it in that way.

I’m rather intrigued that there has been no flushing out of that idea, and I’m rather disappointed that the minister hasn’t jumped into the breach and explained how the Ontario Land Corp. is going to be used for that purpose. Surely the minister isn’t going to make a speech a month for the whole of the next year without following through with something specific to cope with the problem. We all know the problem. What is your answer? Is the Ontario Land Corp. going to be used as the instrument for acquiring that land and getting it back into agriculture?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Well, I am not sure that the land now owned by developers would fall within the category of the ownership of the Ontario Land Corp. when it comes about. Plans are going forward right now for the development of the terms of reference of that particular corporation. But our ministry has a fruitlands development committee -- it is already in place and has been in place for several months -- and their terms of reference are to try to make the best possible use of land that is held by the government, by private developers and by individuals, where they can be persuaded to lease that land on a long-term basis.

I really find nothing wrong with people going out from the urban community and purchasing land. I think they have every right to go out and live in the country the same as I do. But we don’t think it is right that that land be left idle. As I have said before, and I said it here the other night, I don’t think it is a good idea. I hope we will never have to come to the place where we have legislation and regulations to say that “thou shalt do with that land as some government bureaucrat decides you have to do it.”

I do think that there should be a programme -- and we are embarked on this now, through our extension branch, through the ARDA counsellors and others -- of trying to persuade those people who own that land either to use it themselves -- and many of them haven’t got the expertise or the desire to do it -- or to make the agricultural land on that farm available to someone within the community who can use it.

We have done surveys. Surprisingly enough, a great deal of the land that -- I can think of one block of 28,000 acres, not all held by one person, but by a variety of people, in which there were many individual urban people living. It is reasonably good land, and practically all of that land is being farmed, usually by someone in the community and sometimes in pretty substantial holdings. We have got farmers in Ontario who are operating 4,000 and 5,000 acres of land I that they don’t own; they are leasing it from these people. To me, that is a pretty good idea. It has got that land in production; it allows the person who doesn’t have to put the capital into the land to put it into equipment to operate that land. It is just good business.

We have been in touch with several of the large land holders -- that is, developers, in Ontario that have acquired land in the past -- and they make use of most of that land, usually by engaging someone to manage and operate that land for them. Some of them have leased it out on a share-crop basis; others lease it direct, and still others engage somebody to operate it for them. But unless they are either developing the land or getting it ready for development in the year or so when they are putting in services prior to development, they have that land under crop production.

We think there is a move being made along this line, and I suppose that the attractive cash prices for grain over the last year or so has been an added incentive for them to do just those kinds of things. So we are working in that direction.

As I said the other evening, we are working with the other ministries now in having an input into decisions regarding the use of class 1 and class 2 land. I feel very keenly that we should, wherever possible, preserve that land in the future. There have been decisions made in the past, before land became as obviously necessary to preserve as it was since 1973; but in the future, it seems to me, we are talking about an entirely new situation. I believe there is a far greater public appreciation, and certainly there is a greater government appreciation in all ministries, for the preservation of class 1 and class 2 land.

Mr. Chairman: Vote 1703?

Mr. Spence: Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question with regard to vote 1703, rural development? I understand that under the ARDA programme you have a job training programme in the north. Could the minister give us an outline of how many people have made use of this job training programme and what lines are they educated in?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: We don’t have that programme under ARDA. We do have some programmes going on, as I mentioned the other night, under Manpower at Kemptville, but we don’t have under ARDA.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Thunder Bay.

Mr. J. E. Stokes (Thunder Bay): Yes, just briefly, Mr. Chairman. About a week ago, Mr. Minister, we had quite a lengthy discussion with your colleague, the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Bernier), about reforestation in those areas south of the French River. We learned from the minister that most of the reforestation and the silvicultural practices that are being undertaken at the present time by that ministry are in boreal forest or for the most part north of the French River. The Ontario Economic Council in its critique of the forestry industry in 1970, the Hedlin Menzies report in 1969, and to some extent the Brodie report much earlier than that, indicated that the productive capacity of land that was once thought to be suitable for agriculture was found not to be the case. There are many, many areas south of the French River that are going to waste. They have grown up in weed species and are going unused for the simple reason that nobody thought that it was going to be needed for the production of trees and obviously it wasn’t suitable for many kinds of agricultural purposes.

I am wondering if there is any liaison in the resources development field between your ministry and the Ministry of Natural Resources to impress upon them the advisability of undertaking programmes like that. As I said earlier, there is no allocation of funds to any great degree at least for reforestation in areas south of the French River on very marginal farmland that would be ideally suited to the growing of many, many species that take an awful long time to grow in the areas in the far north where the soil conditions and the climatic conditions are less than ideal in many cases for growing anything.

If we are going to maintain our position in world markets in forestry, I am wondering is there any way that you through your ARDA funds can co-operate with the Ministry of Natural Resources to ensure future generations that there will be adequate supplies of wood fibre from these lands that may be able to be rehabilitated through a co-operative effort by your ministry through the ARDA branch with your colleague, the Minister of Natural Resources.

If the forecasts are at all accurate, that we are going to need double the wood fibre by 1985 and possibly quadruple shortly after the turn of the century, it becomes obvious that if we are going to keep our industry viable we are going to have to use a lot of these lands that are allowed to remain in an unproductive state. I am wondering is there any way in which you can become involved through your ARDA branch with that undertaking?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I respect and appreciate the comments made by the member for Thunder Bay in this regard. ARDA has acquired 160,000 acres of submarginal land and turned it over to the Ministry of Natural Resources, which is a part of ARDA for reforestation purchases. That is both south and north of the French River, but unfortunately I don’t have the breakdown either way. A good deal of that land is in the shield area and in parts of eastern Ontario and is now under reforestation.

We also provide under the ARDA programme $500,000 a year for private woodlands development. That does apply in southern Ontario. Along with that, there are many farmers who have embarked on the acquisition of property that may be less than class 1 and 2 soil but they liked the house or the stream on that farm and they have gone out there and then put the whole farm into reforestation.

We are encouraging the use of hardwoods as well through Natural Resources. There is a great deal of literature that is available on these subjects. We get inquiries almost on a regular basis, and we refer them either to Natural Resources or to ARDA. In my own case, we lost an excellent elm bush that was just a real tragedy. Second growth, I suppose stuff 30 or 40 ft high, without a limb on it, beautiful stuff. Lost the whole thing with Dutch elm disease. We took down half the bush and we reforested the rest of it with black walnut and white pine, 4,500 trees. And they are coming along very nicely.

It can be done, and surprisingly it can be done without too much work and effort on the part of the farmer. I am encouraged to see the amount of reforestation that’s going on throughout Ontario. I think that every one of us in this House should be making speeches such as my friend from Thunder Bay has made, but make them throughout their rural communities. Within these chambers we are preaching to the converted. I am sure everyone here would agree with what has been said. But out in the country, we really need to promote that idea.

I am sure there are many farm people who have what I’ve described as wasteland on the farm. Maybe it’s a narrow corner, or something by a creek, or roughland. Let’s get it into trees. Get it growing. Because when one looks at the furniture industry in the small towns of central Ontario, in the area from where my friend from Huron-Bruce and the Chairman of the Management Board (Mr. Winkler) come, and many other places, I don’t know where they are going to get those products 25, 50 years from now. That’s what we should be planning for now. That’s the point my friend has made.

So, we support that programme 100 per cent. I think one of the finest pieces of legislation that was ever brought forward in my time in this Legislature, Mr. Chairman, was the Private Woodlands Act. It was introduced when Kelso Roberts was Minister of Lands and Forests, and that focused attention on this very thing. To me it isn’t quite good enough that we say: “Well, we exempt 10 acres or 10 per cent of a man’s property for reforestation purposes, provided he keeps the cattle out, keeps the property fenced.” That is some incentive. But I think that every one of us has an obligation as to the future needs of these high quality wood products.

Mr. Chairman: Vote 1703.

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Chairman, I just want to go back somewhat in the discussion to reinforce what my friend from York South, and the member for Kingston and the Islands and others have said in respect to people getting started in farming. I refer specifically to younger people. I have many young people come to me from time to time, asking how they can get started in farming. They are interested in farming; they are attracted to it as a way of life, and they want to make their living by farming. Their father, in some cases, isn’t a farmer at all. He’s not associated with agriculture or the land; he’s engaged in some other business. But they want to farm.

They have a problem because Farm Credit Corp. pretty well washes its hands of a young man under those conditions unless he’s got a bundle of money. And if he’s got a bundle of money, he’s crazy to put it in a farm; he might as well put it out at 10 per cent and sit back and collect the interest.

I recognize that the minister is waiting for the federal government to move in and do something as it has indicated. But in the meantime, we have a vacuum, there is no question about it. I have often thought that the ARDA programme could be used in a very direct way in this situation. Under these conditions ARDA could purchase a farm for a young person, say under the age of 25, or even under the age of 30. I think that was the limit under the junior farmer loan programme, or was it 35?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Thirty-five.

Mr. Gaunt: Thirty-five. Well let’s go to 35. Let’s make it the same as the junior farmer loan programme originally was. If a young man is under 35 years of age, and he wants to get started in farming, why couldn’t ARDA, presuming that the federal government doesn’t move into this area in the next six months, buy the farm for him? Provided that everyone concerned is reasonably assured that that young man stands a chance of making a success of that farm, it could come in and buy the land and lease it to him.

Mr. MacDonald: That’s precisely what Stay Option does in Manitoba.

Mr. Gaunt: Well, I think --

Mr. MacDonald: That’s precisely what it does. They have bridged the gap between what is needed now and the ultimate revenue required to carry traditional loans.

Mr. Gaunt: I am not entirely familiar with the programme in Manitoba, but I think it would take the pressure off if the prospective farmer didn’t have to have a base farm -- as it is now, the farmer who leases from ARDA has to have a base farm. If ARDA moved in, purchased the farm and leased it back to the young man on the same basis as they lease to other farmers, it would take the financial pressure off that young person getting started in fanning. He would then be able to turn his capital to buying livestock, machinery and the other things associated with the operation of that farm.

It takes a tremendous capital investment today to buy land in the part of the province from which I come. One farm, a 100-acre farm, sold for $1,000 an acre. That has been unheard of up until now, but that is the kind of capital investment that is going into the land for farming purposes. I can’t quite understand it. I don’t think there is that kind of money in farming, but there seem to be people who are prepared to pay it.

Mr. MacDonald: They were sold at $1,500 an acre on the outskirts of Toronto.

Mr. Gaunt: In many cases that’s the situation, but they drive the prices up for everybody else. That’s the problem. Then young people trying to get started have to compete in that market. Many have to compete against men who have sold their farms close to Toronto, Hamilton, Oshawa or Kitchener and come up to parts of the province like my own; they move in with a pocketful of money and raise the prices for everyone.

In order to do what I am suggesting, you are going to have to alter that $150 per acre. Maybe you should offer it on the basis that you are prepared to pay $50 an acre to young people getting into farming, but only $150 an acre, as is the case at present, for someone enlarging a farm. If you want to work something out on that basis, that’s fine.

Frankly, I think you should be paying more than the $150 an acre, in view of the land prices throughout the province at the moment and as has been the case, I think, for the last three months.

None the less, I think you should apply the ARDA programme in this very specific area if Ottawa doesn’t move in in the next six months, because I think there is a very real vacuum here and I think that it could be filled very adequately by the ARDA programme.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Prince Edward-Lennox.

Mr. Taylor: Mr. Chairman, my friend from Huron-Bruce and others have made an excellent point about financing young people who want to get into farming, but I think that is only the initial problem. Because, as my friend from Huron-Bruce mentioned, if a person had enough money to invest in the immense capital outlay that is necessary to get into farming, he would be crazy to do so. He could put the money out at 10 per cent or more and probably get a better return. But then, you see, you invite the government or some other agency to put the money where the private individual perhaps doesn’t wish to put it.

I am not for discouraging people getting into farming. I think this is great. But I think the bigger problem is the long-term problem of keeping the person in farming once he has his initial investment. In other words, you have got to ensure that the return from farming is an economic return. If he can’t be assured of that, then it is just a question of how long before he goes out of business.

Then, of course, we get back into those problems we discussed a couple of days ago, not only in connection with the marketplace but with the market price and the various factors that apply in that regard, including tariffs, protective measures on a federal scale and also the programmes insofar as the provinces are concerned and, of course, the federal participation in this regard. While we can establish the person -- and, as I say, I think it’s great to assist the young people to get established -- I think it’s even more important to see that the farmer can get an economic return so that he can pay off those loans and eventually own the farm himself.

Until we can solve that larger problem, I can see why ARDA would put a limitation in terms of an economically viable price for land. You surely must equate the price you pay for farmland with the returns that farmland will produce in terms of agricultural products. You can’t compete on the open market with private enterprise which may want to put that land to some other use and is not interested in an economic return in terms of farming.

I think probably the concept of fixing a price is a good one because otherwise it is unrealistic to try to compete with the market value price as opposed to an economic price, as I say, in terms of what that land can produce. We are back --

Mr. Riddell: Where are you going to buy a farm at that price?

Mr. Taylor: I beg your pardon?

Mr. Riddell: Where are you going to buy a farm at the price you are going to establish?

Mr. Gaunt: Not at $150 an acre.

Mr. Taylor: No, I think $150 an acre may certainly be low probably in most areas of Ontario where it’s economic to farm at all. I can see there are lands of very low agricultural quality which are good for pasturing and that’s about all, which could be purchased at that price. I do think that while that may be low the appraisal should be in terms of what that land can produce. I don’t see, again, as the member for Huron-Bruce mentioned, how a person generally can make a profit from farming land that cost him $1,000 an acre unless he is in the Holland Marsh or one of those highly productive areas. There are certain specialized types of farming in which, of course, that can be done. I think in general terms you just can’t afford to pay that type of a price for land and expect to pay off the cost of the land eventually and to make a living in farming.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Minister? Vote 1703?

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Chairman, I notice the money appropriated for the rural development programme this year is down from what it was last year and I wonder if this programme is running out, so to speak. The agreement, as I recall, terminates in 1977. I am not sure.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: It is down very little, Mr. Chairman. Just a difference of about $300,000.

Mr. Gaunt: It’s $350,000.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Around $350,000. First of all, as I understand it, the ARDA agreement will be expiring about the first of 1975, is that right? That is the current ARDA agreement; these are the funds within the ARDA agreement but they are still available. That is one factor. If you will recall we did make an enormous investment in the ARDA plans for southwestern Ontario for flood control and diking, along with the federal government, and that earmarked a good many of the funds.

They’re down somewhat. The Ontario Development Corp. will be providing loans which we might have been providing in some other areas; that is forgivable loans for industry which we provided in the past. Many of those projects will be taken over by ODC, so there won’t be quite the same requirement in that regard.

Mr. Gaunt: The minister mentioned that the ARDA agreement ran out in 1975. Is there any indication that agreement will be renewed?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: We are working on that right now and we are hopeful that it will be renewed -- with perhaps some differences in the emphasis. But we are working on it now.

Mr. Gaunt: The acquisition and construction of physical assets. I notice there is quite a drop here and that is really why I made the comment as to whether this programme was running out. Last year I think the appropriation was $4.8 million; this year it is down to $2.5 million, which is really cut in half.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: That may be a clue. There certainly aren’t as many farms being bought, Mr. Chairman, as there have been previously. At $150 an acre they are just not being bought. That is reflected in the number of farms that were bought last year compared to what they expect to buy this year.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Kent.

Mr. Spence: Mr. Chairman, in your estimates you have agricultural drainage, rural water supply, and rehabilitation. You have this year estimated you will spend $1,571,000 more than you did in 1973-1974. Are you giving consideration to tile drainage in northern Ontario more this year than you did last year? Project costs is the heading.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Of the $1.2 million in that rural water and resource development, capital grants is a part of that. It would be difficult to know just how much money will go into northern Ontario for drainage projects; it is difficult to predict that at the moment. There hasn’t been a very great deal that has been done in there before, but that is their prerogative to make those decisions. We will have the money for them.

Vote 1703 agreed to.

On vote 1704:

Mr. MacDonald: Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a few comments and solicit some reaction from the minister with regard to new facets in connection with marketing. I think we have got to give some --

Mr. Chairman: To the hon. member for York South, how would it be if we were to deal with item 1 first, administration?

Mr. MacDonald: Oh, I am sorry.

Item 1 agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: On item 2.

Mr. MacDonald: I thought there was nothing but the royal box down at the winter fair in item 1 anyway. That is paid for every year and all the chairman’s friends can get into it, so let’s all settle down and get on to the business.

Mr. Chairman: You want to get in too, eh?

Mr. MacDonald: I haven’t been invited yet.

It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, that the very creditable programme that has been achieved in the Province of Ontario with regard to marketing has got to be re-examined in terms of the inadequacies in that marketing system. I recognize that it is a voluntary system, that the Act provides an opportunity for those who are in control of any given marketing scheme to go further down the road in terms of control of their product and in terms of collective bargaining -- things of that nature. But it seems to me that here once again we have an area in which the government or the minister could take some initiative. We have got to tie to marketing the concept that you just don’t get out of the marketplace what happens to be left for the farmer, the primary producer. Rather you get out of the marketplace something that has a price, that has a relationship to the cost of production.

I don’t want to repeat what I said in my leadoff, but it seems to me that one of the foundation stones upon which you build a long-term programme and assure the security of agriculture is that you work out the mechanisms for assuring agriculture of a return that is tied to those costs of production. Then you combine it with some sort of a stabilization fund so that when we have the traditional boom-bust cycle -- the bust being long and the booms being short as far as agriculture is concerned in the past -- we have some mechanism for supplementing what the farmer can get out of the marketplace and, again, supplementing to a point that meets his costs of production and a fair labour return and a fair capital return.

That’s the way you run any other business and agriculture is a business. Let’s start to run it that way.

In that context we come up against a problem. I don’t want to rehash in great, high, political tones the give-and-take we had with the hon. member for Wellington-Dufferin a few moments ago but agriculture must be assured of enough income as an incentive to continue to produce. It may well be that until we have developed high enough minimum wages or developed adequate social policies, we are, for certain basic foods, going to have too high a price for a significant proportion of people to be able to pay it.

It raises the question of subsidies. Farmers get almost paranoid when you raise the question of subsidies. Farmers don’t want subsidies. In the next breath they may be asking for something from the government which is the equivalent of a subsidy but theoretically, philosophically, they are opposed to subsidies. It may well be that as in Britain, as in European countries, we are reaching the point where, if the marketplace is going to give the farmer what he is entitled to, we need to take a serious look at subsidies on certain basic food needs, such as milk or bread, so they can be kept within the means of the lower-income groups and, indeed, will be not as big a claim on the food budget because they are so fundamental.

The point I want to make, Mr. Chairman, is that I agree with the farmers completely on their misgivings with regard to a subsidy, if a subsidy is given as, for example, is the current milk subsidy from Ottawa on a short-term, indefinite basis which is tied, everybody suspects, to the election cycle. If the election happens to go the way the government would like it to go, the subsidy is likely to disappear a month or two after the election. That leaves the farmers who, in the instance of fluid milk, are on a fairly orderly basis of trying to tie in the return in accordance with costs and things of that nature, with the problem of picking up not only the added cost of production which has accumulated in the last six or eight months or a year but picking up on the subsidy when the government walks out and leaves them high and dry.

That kind of subsidy is almost worse than nothing because it creates problems for the future. I am not going to pass the buck to Ottawa because many provincial governments are getting into subsidizing products in order not to open the door to a great influx of that product from other provinces, if they want to be assured that their farmers are going to have an adequate return. It must be a subsidy which is on a long-term basis and is on an assured basis so that it doesn’t foul up the farmer’s already very difficult problem of achieving orderly marketing.

One reason why I assert that without any fear of contradiction is perhaps underlined by a brief paragraph, Mr. Chairman, which I would like to put on the record:

“The lower an individual’s income, the greater the portion that is spent on food and housing. Citizens in low income brackets today spend over 50 per cent on food. Those earning $8,000 spend 32 per cent. Those $12,000, 21 per cent and at $30,000 only eight per cent.”

For the person who is in a very low income bracket -- that is, down to $4,000, $5,000 or $6,000 -- 50 per cent of his income is going on food.

Now, (a) the farmer needs to get a return at a higher level; and (b) it seems to me there is a social need on the part of governments to make certain that the lower income family is going to be able to get food” -- as vital a food as, say, bread and milk -- at a price which isn’t going to gouge the family budget. There is your place. There is the need for a long-term subsidy.

Finally, to bring it into focus in terms of perhaps the area of greatest public discussion at the moment, namely, milk, I mentioned briefly in my leadoff that rather illuminating meeting that I was able to attend of industrial milk producers in eastern Ontario, all the way from Wolfe Island, in the sports complex in Nepean. That just shows how they’d go to try to get somebody to listen to them and get a little collective effort.

Mr. Taylor: We listen in Prince Edward-Lennox.

Mr. MacDonald: Yes, that’s right too.

Alec Bell, the member of the OMMB from eastern Ontario, had done a study, or a group of people in the OFA had done a study, showing that the average cost of production was $10.85 per cwt on 12 farms for the 1973 calendar year. That’s rather fascinating, because that was no more than two or three weeks after the price for fluid milk, the top-priced product of the industry, went up to $10.45. In other words, they were 40 cents below what was deemed to be the cost of production on the basis of those 12 farms.

As for the industrial milk producer, he is in an increasing state of ferment, if not uprising, particularly in the Province of Quebec, and I think it’s going to slop over into the Province of Ontario. The industrial milk producer has been getting $6.35, the blend price, with a $2.30 subsidy bringing it to about $8.65. That is the reason why your industrial milk producers are holding protest meetings. There were 700 or 800 drawn from all out through the Ottawa Valley at that meeting in the Nepean sports complex, asking what’s going to be done to come up with the remainder of that $2 subsidy that was asked for.

In fact, the Quebec farmers have now gone one better. They say it should be a $3 subsidy, not $2. And in terms of the costs of production as assessed on those 12 farms in eastern Ontario, that is correct. If farmers have been leaving dairying in the numbers they have in the last year, either we do something to stop that or we quit lamenting. I mean it is one or the other.

I would agree with the minister that if we can get Ottawa to move into this picture, good. I suspect there’s the outside chance that between now and July 8, in another one of the goodies that will be spread about in the fashion that Trudeau and all his ministers are doing, that we may have some reaction to these industrial milk prices. I don’t know, but if we don’t get a reaction then -- and even if we do get a reaction -- I suggest that once again, here is the place, if the minister is really disturbed about what is happening to the dairy industry, where the province can move in at least on a temporary basis.

I remind the minister, for example, that in Alberta the provincial government -- and I know they’ve got a gold mine or an oil mine there and $900 million coming in in the next year -- is paying $1.11 subsidy for all milk, fluid as well as industrial milk.

In British Columbia they have paid subsidies on a periodic basis to bridge the gap between what is got from the marketplace and what is deemed, in accordance with their formula procedures, to be an adequate return to the farmer.

All I’m saying is that it seems to me, if we want to keep the dairy industry from continuing to disintegrate and just disappearing before ourselves with 2,100 farmers going, the minister can and should do something to stop the erosion. The reason why it may well be that it would be a short-term move, though at least it would check the erosion for the moment, is that we have another promise from Ottawa, which hopefully is going to be fulfilled at some point. The Minister of Agriculture when he announced his dairy policy a few weeks ago said he was going to examine the development of a milk formula for industrial milk that would be tied to the cost of production.

This is rather interesting because if it’s going to be a cost of production formula it will return more to the farmer, for example, than the fluid milk producer in Ontario has been getting, because he’s not been on a cost of production, he’s been on the economic formula which involves capacity of consumers to buy and a lot of other factors. That is why they are getting $10.45 at a time when the OFA does a study and finds the cost of production is $10.85 in eastern Ontario.

An hon. member: That’s true.

Mr. MacDonald: Right, it’s true. It seems to me that this is too serious a matter to let go for a week or a month. The provincial government can on a short-term basis move in with a subsidy that would tie the returns to the cost of production. Hopefully, having done that kind of thing, then the minister would be even in a stronger position to get behind Gene Whelan, if it is Gene Whelan, or Alvin Hamilton if it is Alvin Hamilton, or Bill Knight if it is Bill Knight for the New Democratic Party or whoever is Minister of Agriculture.

An hon. member: Who is Bill Knight?

Mr. MacDonald: You have never heard of him?

An hon. member: No, I haven’t.

Hon. J. R. Rhodes (Minister of Transportation and Communications): No, nor will anybody else.

Mr. MacDonald: Well, you will hear of him sooner or later. He’s the Jack Messer of the future.

Mr. Riddell: You sure will be in the dark then.

Mr. MacDonald: No, they won’t be in the dark.

The government should do that to make certain that we can stem the tide at the present time, rather than let it go on for any longer. What is the minister’s reaction to some immediate initiative to tie farm incomes to the cost of production? In other words, to get back to what I was saying -- I always thought the objective of the minister’s farm income committee was to establish an incentive price which would return to the fanner an income which would meet his costs of production, his labour and his capital investment.

Hon. Mr. Stewart: I made the points on the agricultural prices stabilization last week in the absence of my friend from York South. I don’t think I should repeat that again. Suffice it to say that we are totally in support of the proposals which I enunciated that night and which I have on paper provided to the federal minister as of Dec. 17, 1973. That stabilization programme should be based on cost of production.

I’m not going to be critical of the existing fluid milk formula in the Province of Ontario. I must say, that in my opinion, it does not meet the needs of today. It might have been an excellent place to start at one time, but it has tied to economic factors that are really not related to current costs.

Look at the cost of fertilizer and of seeds, for instance. The planting season is just about completed but look at the cost of seeds, fuel, hydro, baler twine -- the things that go to make up the cost inputs of a farm, machinery, supplies, repairs, and all these things. To me, the fluid milk price formula just doesn’t reflect that accurately enough.

We went to Ottawa, as my hon. friends know. I announced that trip here in the House and talked about what we had asked for at Ottawa with regard to the increase in the price of industrial milk. The federal people suggested to us that they felt after the cheques started to come out on industrial milk prices some of the unrest that we certainly observed would disappear or dissipate to some degree, because they had made other changes besides increasing the support prices for dairy products. Some of those might help to increase the price somewhat because there was more milk eligible for the subsidy than had previously been the case. That was a factor.

How important it is, I think, is a debatable issue. Certainly, we challenge some of the figures that we were given that day because we thought they were theoretical figures. In fact, we described them in other ways, but I don’t think I will put them on Hansard right at the moment. It just didn’t add up, as far as I was concerned.

I support what has been said here tonight. I think there has to be something done as far as industrial milk prices are concerned. I was given to understand that by, I think, the middle of June, the federal minister has asked the dairy farmers of Canada to come back with a price on industrial milk based on a formula which reflected cost of production. Here we are, at June 6, and I understand that is to be in his hands within nine days, by June 15. Whether it will be or not, I don’t know.

Dairy farmers of Canada at first had asked for $2 a cwt increase over last year’s price. They got $1.23, I believe, or something like that. In actual figures, it wasn’t enough. We supported them in that, because to have gone beyond that and asked for a higher increase than had been suggested by dairy farmers, I think, would have left us in the position of somebody questioning the credibility of the two ministers -- one from Quebec and one from Ontario -- saying we want more for the dairy farmers than the dairy farmers have actually asked. I think there is some validity in that.

Mr. MacDonald: What about the province bridging the gap temporarily?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: This is something that has to be taken into consideration. We are hopeful, however, that Ottawa will take a new look at industrial milk prices.

Mr. Chairman: Item 2 of vote 1704 carried?

Mr. Gaunt: No.

Mr. Chairman: The hon. member for Huron-Bruce.

Mr. Gaunt: I want to move away from the milk for a moment. I want to come back to it a bit later on, but I wanted to talk about the pullet grower situation at the moment, if I may. This is something with which I happen to be rather familiar, and I want to get the minister’s view. I don’t think I will go through the entire history of the problem. The minister is well aware of the problem, and it’s a continuing problem, although I think at this point in time it seems to be sorting itself out.

I was interested in reading the speech the minister gave to the Ontario Hatcherymen’s Association last October. He made some interesting comments in that speech. I am just going to quote a part of it, particularly from page 3. The minister said:

“Because of the relatively short time it requires to produce a chicken, broiler, or even a flock of layers, because the buildings can be readily adapted for various aspects of the industry, it has always been easy for the poultry industry to leap from shortage to surplus in a matter of months, but it is not enough to control the marketing of eggs or the production of broiler chickens. That supply management must reach back up the pipeline of the poultry industry to include all facets of the productive process, including the producer of started pullets -- the breeding flocks, the hatcheries, and all those who have an influence in production.”

I certainly agree with that. That puts it in proper perspective.

The Pullet Growers Board is presently in limbo, as I understand it. It has been called in to meet with the Farm Products Marketing Board. I think there were some suggestions that the Egg and Fowl Producers Marketing Board should incorporate some protection for the pullet growers under its plan. I think the suggestion was made that they should have a once-in-a-lifetime conversion privilege, whereby if an egg producer decided to go into the raising of his own replacement pullets, on his own farm, then the pullet grower who lost his contract because the egg producer went into the replacement pullet business could then acquire an egg contract, or an egg quota, so that it would balance itself off.

I suppose that’s some protection. It is protection by coercion, I suppose, because if the egg producer is at all smart, and stops to think about it, he will realize that if he undertakes to start to grow his own replacement pullets, he is, in effect, cutting his own throat, because he is going to win on the oranges but lose on the bananas -- that kind of thing. So I think it’s a definite disincentive for the egg producer to go into the pullet growing business.

I think that there should be another rider added to that, and that’s the matter of the egg producer having a cutback on his quota so that he would not only suffer in encouraging more egg production by going into the pullet business, but he would also suffer in a double way, really, by having his own quota cut back. I think this has been considered.

As I understand it, the Farm Products Marketing Board has asked the Egg and Fowl Producers Marketing Board to incorporate the once-in-a-lifetime conversion privilege and make it part of the egg plan. I think that’s been done. As I understand it, there has been some discussion surrounding the matter of the quota as it applies to the egg producer, but as yet that hasn’t been incorporated in the egg plan. Indeed, I think the Egg and Fowl Producers Marketing Board has rejected that idea.

I wonder if there is anything further by way of protection that the minister feels is necessary insofar as the pullet growers are concerned. Do you have anything else in mind by way of ensuring that the pullet growers are -- I was going to say fully protected, but I don’t think there is any way in which they can be fully protected -- but at least as fully protected as possible against egg producers in the province moving in and actually capturing the market that was formerly held by pullet growers?

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Chairman, the hon. member has covered the situation very well indeed. When we started off the pullet plan, I didn’t know -- and I don’t think our staff really knew -- that less than 30 per cent of the pullets raised in Ontario were privately owned. They are owned by the companies. Talk about being led down the garden path -- I sure bought that one. I think that’s the best way to describe it.

There is no question that controls had to be exercised, but they had to be exercised at the hatchery and feed company level because the hatcheries and the feed companies were in bed together on this whole deal -- and they still are. It has to be straightened out at that level, and I think the hatchery men who realize the concern and importance of getting this thing done support that position. There may be the odd one who doesn’t -- probably ones that aren’t owned by Canadians.

In any event, the matter is being resolved. I wouldn’t go so far as my friend has suggested, to say that the Egg Board have rejected the once-in-a-lifetime right of the pullet producer to convert to egg production. I think it is fair to say that they have resisted it. But we feel that the pullet producer has to be protected to some degree.

We share the concern that my friend has expressed, that the egg producer might simply get into pullet production himself and thereby shut off the fellow who has been supplying the pullets, leaving him with facilities that he is going to have to fill with something. It’s only fair and right that he should have that right of conversion. I am sure they will be able to get it worked out. There are other plans that are under way now and consideration is being given to other aspects of the egg business that I think may help to resolve some of the producer’s concern in having been cut back on making the optimum use of his facilities.

Mr. Gaunt: I appreciate the minister’s comments, and I know he understands the problem and has a certain degree of sympathy for the problem --

An Hon. member: It’s not enough.

Mr. Gaunt: I just want to underline the fact that the pullet grower is in a very unique position, because he is the only producer of fowl who isn’t on a quota system. The broiler people are on a quota system; the turkey people are on a quota system; the egg people are on a quota system. But he is sitting high and dry without any quota system. There is no regulation of the product he produces under today’s circumstances. As we see it, if he doesn’t have some form of protection, he is simply left high and dry and right out of it because he hasn’t got the privilege of moving into some other area.

I know the minister understands that and he appreciates it. I just say again, that I hope the minister and his people will make sure that that protection is guaranteed in the egg plan. Because that’s the only thing on which the pullet growers can hang their hats and be assured that they are reasonably protected.

The other thing that I wanted to raise is along the same lines. I understand that the pullet growers are meeting with the Farm Products Marketing Board in regard to the problem they are having in relation to their debt. I think they are some $40,000 in debt after having gone through this whole circuit by starting up the marketing, or at least the --

Hon. Mr. Stewart: Mr. Chairman, I can help the hon. member in that I believe it’s a $30,000 debt and we’ve agreed to pick it up.

Mr. Gaunt: Oh good. That’s all I wanted to know.

Mr. Chairman: Anything else on vote 1704, item 2?

Mr. Ruston: I was just going to mention a couple of things on marketing. I have a letter with regards to trucking costs, pricing and so forth. I noticed that in the Leamington area, for instance, a 75-lb bag of potatoes costs 55 cents to get it trucked to Toronto and $1.10 to Montreal. This gives us an idea of the costs of getting the goods to the centres of population.

For a 75-lb bag of potatoes, getting it trucked to Montreal costs 1 ½ cents a lb; and three-quarters of a cent to Toronto. I just received this information from the member for Essex South (Mr. Paterson) and it gives you an idea of costs. A bushel of potatoes costs 40 cents to Toronto and 80 cents to Montreal. I just wanted to have that put on the record as an idea of the cost of having things delivered. This year with the new prices for some of the vegetables that we have been reading about, it’s going to mean increases to the consumer.

I noticed the price of tomatoes this year under the new contract. It is much higher than last year; but the contracts for 1973, of course, were made up in the winter previously. It was during that year that prices went up. And now the price of No. 1 tomatoes by the ton will be $74. Of course, looking back you see that in 1965 -- the last year I grew them I think they were $43 a ton. Over nine years, that increase really isn’t too bad.

Of course, what this amounts to is about 3 ¾ cents a pound for tomatoes from the field delivered to the factory. If you take a 32 oz can of tomatoes, the actual cost of the tomatoes produced by the farmer and delivered to the factory is seven cents. Of course, the processing and continual handling from there on until it gets to the shelf and to the householder are the major costs. I think it’s an interesting point.

I would think at this price that farmers will be able to come out with a fair margin of profit. I understand that there is quite an increase in the acreage of tomatoes, because there has been a pretty good demand for them. When we look back a few years ago, I think we had a number of arguments here in the House with the minister and also with the federal people about import tomatoes hurting us. But now we are in a position to sell all we can grow, so it’s quite a change over the last few years.

And it’s the same with corn -- all the canned goods. The major costs are for processing, storage and delivery to the householder. I think that’s a point that we have to make --

Mr. Chairman: Maybe the hon. member for Kent could break off here -- it’s getting very close to adjournment time.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves that the committee rise and report.

Motion agreed to.

The House resumed, Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Speaker, the committee of supply begs to report certain resolutions and asks for leave to sit again.

Report agreed to.

Hon. E. A. Winkler (Chairman, Management Board of Cabinet): Mr. Speaker, before I move the adjournment of the House, I would like to say that tomorrow we will return to the consideration of these estimates and on Monday we will also consider estimates; should the estimates of this ministry be concluded, we will consider the estimates of the Treasurer (Mr. White).

On Tuesday -- and I have distributed this list, but I will read it so that it is on the record -- we will deal with bills 60, 50, 51, 52, 69, 39, 35, 37, 63 and 70.

On Thursday next we will again proceed with estimates and a week from tomorrow we will get into the budget debate, if there are enough speakers on that day to use the hours available to us. If not, we will proceed further with estimates.

Hon. Mr. Winkler moves the adjournment of the House.

Motion agreed to.

The House adjourned at 10:30 o’clock, p.m.