Senator Downe: Yes, of course.

Senator Downe: Yes.

Senator Downe: No, I cannot. But I can tell you that our costs in P.E.I. are substantially higher across the board for most energy than in other regions and provinces. The last time I checked, for example, we have the highest electricity rates in Canada.

Senator Downe: Thank you. I can’t take credit for a short speech because I had nothing prepared. I was motivated by the other two speeches. I will say this: The farmers from Prince Edward Island who have contacted me about this are concerned about the ever-increasing cost of production. The costs they’re getting for their products are not set. Consumers go into grocery stores — into Sobeys, Foodland, Loblaws — and we all recognize prices are going up substantially. But the farmers are getting very little of that return, and neither are the fishers in the region. The prices are out of whack. The consumers are paying, and the returns to farmers are not where they should be. This bill, of course, will add to the problem for those farmers. Those who are on supply management are in a different situation, and we’re very glad they’re on supply management.

I might add that the farmers in rural Prince Edward Island who are in supply management have a quality of life that we would all want to obtain and that we would want all farmers to have. They also, because of that income, can contribute to the community — fundraisers, benefit concerts. They stay in the community, they provide for the community and they advance the growth of the community. It’s very important for rural Prince Edward Island.

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Honourable senators, I had a question, but, with five seconds left, I do not have time to ask it. I have no prepared notes, but, as always, Senators Woo and Dalphond raise very interesting points. They should be addressed so that colleagues have a clearer picture of what is going on.

I completely reject Senator Woo’s comments about what the motives might be of people who favour this bill. In my part of Canada, the farmers do not have any natural gas to assist them. The fact that the price of natural gas has gone down substantially has been a theme of both speeches we heard tonight. The farmers in Prince Edward Island have limited resources of energy. We have some solar and some wind, and the rest is oil and propane that is imported, so the costs are completely different.

Senator Dalphond raised a number of interesting points. I might start off by talking about some of his suggestions for the Rules Committee to consider, which I think are very interesting. Senator Dalphond also highlighted the prosperity of farmers, and he gave a very good argument for supply management and the benefits of supply management. It would be the hope of all of us that all farmers would have the same income and stability that other Canadians have, and supply management provides that.

However, there is a large group of farmers who do not benefit from supply management. For potato farmers in Prince Edward Island, the local joke is that you may as well roll the dice in Las Vegas as throw the seeds in the field because you don’t know what the crop will be, what the weather will be and what the price will be. It’s a high-risk business. The additional cost of the measures proposed by the government is unfair on a regional basis. As a regional chamber, we should keep that in mind, with the lack of natural gas.

The other thing we should recall, colleagues, is how this bill got here. This is a bill proposed by a Conservative MP. They don’t have a majority in the House of Commons. A number of Liberal MPs had to recognize the importance of this and support it to pass it. It’s interesting that the two senators who spoke tonight are from cities. They support farmers, but they think their position is more important than farmers’ success and prosperity. The Liberal MPs who voted for this bill took a high risk. Unlike in this chamber, MPs who deviate from the party line are subject to a range of punishments, I would call them — restrictions on what they can do, speaking time and committees. So they were very good representatives of their regions. They recognized the concerns expressed by the farming community, and they supported this legislation. That’s how it ended up here. I’m surprised senators tonight have embraced the views of the Liberal cabinet as opposed to those MPs who spoke and voted in an independent manner, which is what we’re striving to do here on a regular basis.

Colleagues, there are lots of good things in this bill and lots of proposals, but I’ll conclude with these comments: We all remember when, during the pandemic, we had shortages in our country because of things we could not get because they were offshore. We see President Biden onshoring as much as he can in a whole range of industries. We have to be very careful in this country. If the food supply system is threatened and if farmers go out of business, if they’re gone, they’re not coming back. We do not want to be dependent in this country on food coming from other countries. We want food security in our country. The only way to do that is to have successful, prosperous farmers in our country. This bill would help achieve that.

Thank you, colleagues.