J. Weisgerber: I want to raise a number of Peace region issues today, particularly related to the grain industry.

As the minister is well aware, we had the wettest fall in history last year. About 65 percent of the crops remained in the fields over winter; those that were harvested were harvested on incredibly wet field. That resulted in a lot of soil damage which needs to be repaired before a crop can be planted again. The loss to farmers and to the community is in the tens of millions of dollars. The value of the crops left in the field was estimated in the area of $45 million -- a significant part of the community's income.

[2:45]

The response from government has been to provide $1.2 million in a ten-year fund for agricultural
diversification. One should never, I suppose, be critical of money that comes into the area. But, quite obviously, it was an inappropriate and inadequate response at the time, and it continues to be.

I was quite forthright in my assessment of that at the time the offer was made, and there's been
nothing that's happened since then that would change my mind. About six weeks ago I had the
opportunity to sit in the minister's office with a number of officials to discuss the possibility of a spring that was not conducive to an early harvest and to replanting of fields harvested. It was suggested at that time that I was being pessimistic.

My pessimism was not misplaced. The wettest fall in history has been followed by an incredibly wet, late, cold spring. Most of the grain remains unharvested; most of the fields remain unplanted. So the $45 million loss that we saw last year is going to be further compounded this year because, in fact, the grain hasn't been harvested in many cases. The grain that was harvested was harvested too late for farmers to be able to replant their crops, and in many cases even fields that were harvested last year have ruts left in them and have been too wet to allow for any cultivation, never mind planting of spring crops.

So having kind of laid out the situation as I believe it is today -- and I haven't for a moment
exaggerated the situation; the situation is at least as bad as I've described it over the last couple of
minutes -- I would like to start discussions around the ministry's response to this situation by hearing from the minister his analysis of the situation, his understanding of the crisis that exists in the grain community in the Peace, perhaps to hear from the minister what response he sees the ministry
making in light of the very unsatisfactory results of this very cold, wet spring.

The very pessimistic "what if" that I laid out in his office six weeks ago has indeed happened. Where do we go from here? I was told six weeks ago: "Let's wait and see; maybe we'll get a warm, hot, dry spring, and all the crops will come off and be replanted." Well, it hasn't happened, so I now look to the minister for a response to the "what if" question.

Hon. C. Evans: Firstly, just sort of for the record, I think it's true what the hon. member says.
Somebody might have said his view is pessimistic, but he knows it wasn't me. I didn't say it and
didn't suggest that it was. I just thought, in case this turned out to be a mailer, I'd make that point.

Secondly, the reason why the hon. member had a meeting in my office -- and we've talked both here and in the Peace in the last year -- is because we have been attempting, I think, to address this issue with some coordination between representatives of the area and this ministry.

The hon. member asks for the minister's view of the situation and for my response. Firstly, the view
of the situation is largely as the member describes it, although somewhat worse in two respects. Last year, for the first time in a long time, both prices and soil conditions in the spring were suggestive of a bumper crop saleable at a price that would make money. That led many people who had seen drought conditions and low prices in recent years -- in fact for a long time -- to make a business plan for last year that suggested that they seed and fertilize, with heavy input costs, in the hope of recouping some losses that they had experienced earlier in this decade. It was a logical assumption and led lots of people to acquire credit for those input costs, which is rumoured to be payable at the time of harvest or to be contracted at 30 percent interest in case of failure to pay it at the time of harvest.

The weather then deteriorated -- and here it's sort of hard to describe, because we're not there and
it's hard to imagine. It deteriorated in such a way that, while the crop did in fact mature, ground
conditions made it impossible to harvest the crop without destroying the land or destroying the
machinery. In order to make that point, growers there supplied me with a video to show me what
working the mud looked like, but they also took me to see brand-new machinery -- machinery that
ought to have lasted ten years -- partially wrecked within a season in an attempt to remove a crop
from land too soggy to work.

Now, the necessity to remove the crop was because so much was riding on it. That's in terms of
people's ability to make the kind of investments that they'd had to make for the future and also
because of the kinds of investments they had made, either in machinery or input costs, based on the
crop.

The adequacy of the government's response is hard to measure. There's an irony going on here, I
think, in that it appeared to me that people who voted for the hon. member in the Peace tended to
think that the government's response was reasonable, and people who voted for me in the Peace
tended to think that government's response was totally inadequate. I think both things are true.

If you interpret the government's appropriate response as being the state intervening to assist a
region in time of disaster and make them whole, then the government's response was wholly
inadequate. If you assume that the correct government response is to be an agent of change -- to
attempt to assist people to make different decisions in future, more appropriate to the market or to
the weather conditions or to their own decisions -- then the government response was appropriate
and maybe even creative. I tend to be of the former camp, and yet I am minister in an era when the
latter decision is more appropriate to the fiscal situation that government experiences.

Also, as the hon. member knows, I am minister at a time when the response in the Peace is actually
pretty much in keeping with our response around the province to similar issues in this fiscal year. I
would cite greenhouses on Vancouver Island, floods in Creston in my own constituency, the crash of the biggest potato grower in the interior in my own constituency -- all due to outrageous weather
conditions, and all situations in which the government has been unable to respond in the traditional
government way of making the farm community whole again.

In terms of the hon. member's question about what we do with this spring situation, given that his
pessimism may in fact come true -- farmers may not be able to harvest last year's crop. . . . Firstly,
as the member knows, we did not go to the Peace with our $1.2 million in isolation; we went to the
Peace to encourage federal and municipal governments to work with us within the context of their
fiscal ability and their responsibility to contribute, as well. That resulted in the federal government
deciding to make arrangements for unharvested grain last fall. It also meant that the federal
government operated other programs with which it is involved in a way, to attempt to respond to the crisis. I actually think that, in the main -- at least until recent months, when the federal government began to run for office rather than govern -- last fall the federal government did as well as they could at assisting. The net result was that a good deal of money was pumped into the Peace at a time of travail.

I should back up and say that we had quite an intense meeting -- the kind that you don't have in
Victoria but you do have in a rural hall somewhere -- in a college in the Peace, largely on the issue of crop insurance. The government, of course, provides crop insurance in order to allow farmers to
make a business decision to insure against situations exactly like this. So when I sat up and said, "We provide crop insurance," the farm community was articulate in saying to me: "Yes, you provide crop insurance, and the nature of that insurance is actually so lousy that only about 3 percent of us buy it." Is that right -- 3 percent? No, 30 percent buy it.

Interjection.

Hon. C. Evans: That's right. That's why I'm not the Minister of Finance. At least, I have the sense
to ask, however.

So we put a whole bunch of energy, between last fall and this spring, into trying to fix what the
farmers told me was broken, resulting in a situation where this year more than twice the number of
grain farmers are buying crop insurance. We also expect that last year's program may very well pay
out $3.5 million against last year's crop.

[3:00]

The other concern expressed to me was that the way that crop insurance is administered might result in people being forced to harvest last year's crop at the moment that they're required to be on the land putting in this year's crop, leading them to suffer two losses in a row instead of one. We went to the advisory committee for crop insurance in the Peace and asked them for an appropriate cutoff date for people to purchase this year's crop insurance and to get the crops in -- and to actually pick the target date in discussions with the people. I instructed our staff to make sure that our inspectors on the ground made subjective decisions in terms of those folks that have to write the crop off -- writing it off and allowing it to be burnt in time to get next year's crop in the ground.

That's a long answer, because I actually think that we made a fairly complex response. But if the
question inherently is, "How come you didn't come forward with $45 million -- or some substantial
part of $45 million -- to make the people whole?" there's a very short answer, which is that
government doesn't have $45 million. As inadequate as that may sound here, in the hall in the Peace
there wasn't a soul there who would have doubted that government didn't have $45 million. In fact, I would suggest that while the people there were really articulate in their desire to say to me, "We
need the money," they were more articulate than anyone who works here at saying: "We also know
you don't have it."

J. Weisgerber: First of all, let me assure the minister that I'm far more interested in finding a
resolution to the difficulties of the farmers and the difficulties faced by the Peace River community
than I am in developing a mailer. So my purpose in coming here is entirely focused on the needs of
the people that I represent. Whether they voted for me or didn't vote for me makes not a whit of
difference to me after the election. So when farmers who are known supporters of mine come and
take one point of view and those who voted for the party which you represent take another, I feel
obliged to represent the interests of farmers generally, and I genuinely try not to differentiate between those.

We're going to talk about this for a little while, I think, and I don't want to spend a lot of time
dwelling on last year. I think that the response from government was inappropriate, and we disagree with that. The question that is front and centre with me now is that we are at the sixth day of June. The crops mostly have not been planted. Twenty percent of the crops have been planted at a date when most farmers believe they've reached the cutoff for all except possibly canola or grain feed. So the possibilities that were discussed in your office have in fact come to happen. So now the question is. . . . Rather than wait until this fall or next spring when the crunch will hit, I'm suggesting -- and I want to do it in an open and amicable way if we can -- that we say that the problem we saw last year is going to be exacerbated by the time farmers are faced with planting a crop in 1998.

If only 20 percent of the crops are planted, regardless of how good the crops are or how good the
prices are this year, most farmers are going to be facing a far more difficult situation in terms of cash
flow and the ability to plant a crop next year.

I'm now trying to move forward, to think about the issues that happen next year, and I know from
my years around here that if we don't start moving in that direction today, the answer will be
precisely the same as it was last year: "Well, there's nothing in the budget for it." I'm suggesting to the minister that there is a problem now. That's not a speculation as to whether there's going to be a
financial crisis in the Peace, whether or not that's going to occur. With the loss of last year's crop, in
large measure, and the fact that crops have not been planted in any significant way, it suggests to me that that's already occurred.

The minister suggests that he sees the new role of government as being an agent of change, and I
have some sympathy with that approach. But when the minister was in the Peace, one of the things
he did was go to meet with the group organized during the 1992 drought crisis -- the PRASPS
organization -- to tell them that there was no more funding for them. So these agents of change don't seem to have the kind of horizon or the kind of vision that perhaps one would look for in an
administration that was seeking to fundamentally change the direction. There's no doubt that the
money -- the $1.2 million that I referred to earlier -- will very likely be used in large measure for field trials, variety trials, etc. That's a useful enterprise and no doubt a productive enterprise, but that's not going to be an agent of significant change; that's not going to change the face of farming. It may change the variety of wheat or oats or barley or canola that a farmer chooses to plant, but I suspect that's a bit less dramatic than what is perhaps envisioned in making change.

The minister cited a number of examples of crises in other areas of the province -- other industries
and other sectors. Let me say for the record that the government's response to Evans Forest
Products was quite dramatically different than the government's response to the farmers in the Peace. If the minister wants to argue with that, I'd be happy to listen to the argument. But I'll tell you, I believe -- and all of those very sober, wise farmers that he met with at the college believe -- that the government had a far different set of standards for the people of Golden and Evans Forest Products than they had for their industry. If you want to dispute that, fine.

For the greenhouses, for the flooding, at least there's a provincial emergency program. Again,
perhaps the response was inadequate. But I'll tell you, I think the response in terms of dollars in the
pocket for losses suffered was significantly more in each of the examples that the minister used
compared to the example of a farmer in the Peace country.

Again, I want to underline that I think the second shoe has fallen. When we met with the farmers at
the college, one of the things that we both came away with was the fact that most farmers said: "I'm
okay this year. I'm going to make it. I'm going to be able to get myself through this fall '96 crisis."
And that was an observation that anyone would make. I would suggest to you that those same folks are going to find it much, much more difficult to sustain two years in a row, either with crops left in the field or significant acreages unplanted.

Finally, before I look to the minister for a response, I think that while officials in the area and perhaps officials within the ministry recognize. . . . The Peace and this issue are not homogenous. It's not 20 percent of the crops in every community and in every section of land that remains unharvested. It's not only 20 percent of the crops across the Peace that are planted. There are areas -- north Rolla, Doe River -- where the crops were harvested and in large measure replanted. There were other areas to the west of Dawson Creek -- Sunrise Valley, Sunset Prairie, Groundbirch -- where almost no crop was harvested last year and almost no crop will be planted this year.

It's a disservice to the people, the individual farm families, to think that you can simply statistically line these things out and say: "Gosh, they got half their crop off. They've managed to get 20 or 30
percent of their acreages planted again. They're going to be eating hamburger instead of steak this
winter, but they're all going to make it through." That's just not the way that weather patterns and soil conditions in the Peace have caused the hurt to be distributed. It's not evenly distributed across the region. There are communities in the area that have been incredibly seriously hit, and there are others that have suffered hurt, but to a far lesser degree.

So I do believe that something more than a contribution to diversification will be required before the
1998 crops are planted again if we are going to see a farm grain industry in the Peace that continues to have the kind of strength that it has exhibited over the last 40 or 50 years. This is a
once-in-50-years occurrence at the very best.

Hon. C. Evans: First I'll respond to the question about PRASPS. The member is correct that there
was $100,000 left in PRASPS to spend and that the government took the money back. Government does that. I've observed that government does that a lot. That's the exact reason why it seemed to me that the $1.2 million in actual money that people could put in the bank and draw down on their own, and that the people controlled so government couldn't fail to deliver it, or change its mind, or run upon hard times, was probably ten times more valuable than the annual budgetary promise that PRASPS represented. In fact, I kind of figured, since the PRASPS decision was made before the $1.2 million, that the $1.2 million was an effort to address precisely that anomaly -- that unfortunate anomaly.

Now, the second issue is: what are we going to do about the land that doesn't get planted? Well, 70 percent of the farmers have actually applied for crop insurance, and it's my understanding that crop insurance will pay out -- in the case of the disaster that the member described -- $20 an acre for land unplanted, if the land is unplanted because of the inability to get on the land. I don't really want to suggest that that's a panacea either, although it does recognize that the function of crop insurance is to allow people to make business decisions to protect themselves against crises.

So that's bit of an answer, or at least a structural answer, to what the government's response is to the other shoe dropping. The member is correct that he and I both heard people say. . . . On more than one occasion, individual farmers would say: "Well, actually I'm all right. I had some money saved in NISA; I have a job on the side; I actually got some of my crop in. My debt levels will absorb this. But my neighbour or my friend. . . . I know people who will lose their farm."

What I hear the hon. member saying is that this year, there's a possibility that it will stop being a
third-party concern, where everybody knows somebody that's in a jam and move to be a situation
where the people themselves are in crisis. So I guess what I'd like to do is ask you, so that I can
consider your thoughts on the subject: what did you come here, as the representative, to propose
that I do? Surely your constituents have said to you, regardless of what they thought of our response last year: "Here's what we think you ought to do." And I'd like to hear it.

[3:15]

J. Weisgerber: I'm going to suggest to you a number of solutions that we both heard last year. One was that money would be made available on either a prime or a no-interest basis for replanting
crops, because I think that may well be an issue that has to be addressed in the spring of 1998.

I'm coming to the minister to suggest now that the budget process start to consider and accommodate the needs that are going to be very clearly identified for next spring. I'm suggesting: "Let's look at what's going to be necessary in order to make sure that farmers next year -- recognizing that this year is going to be a serious crisis in terms of planting, harvesting, sales, etc. . . ."

We heard a number of suggestions. The minister has heard it; the minister's staff have heard it. I can
spend some time here trying to recall some of the precise programs, but I would suggest to the
minister most specifically that he start now to look at having the money available for an appropriate
response next spring. Ten months from now, farmers are not, in large measure, going to have the
money necessary to plant a crop and to buy the inputs, this fertilizer, the seed and those things that
go with it. That's a prediction that I believe is based not only on supposition but on the reality of
where the Peace country is on June 6 or June 7 -- whatever day it happens to be.

Maybe I'll let the minister respond to that, because I do want to get on to the crop insurance. That
was the next item that I wanted to talk about. If the minister is asking what I propose, I'm not
proposing a bunch of grants, a bunch of handouts. I don't think anybody has ever asked for that. But I do believe that there is going to be a credit crisis in the Peace next year, and I'm hoping that the minister will start now. I don't expect him to make an undertaking other than to do whatever it is he is prepared to commit to attempt to do or to undertake to do. I don't want to have us say in April of 1998: "Well, gee, the budget has already come down and we didn't plan for the fact that we're going to need this money, so of course our budgetary process didn't accommodate it." I'm attempting to use what little experience I have to say that this time around you have a ten-month lead on what you need to have available come budget time next year.

Hon. C. Evans: I would be pleased to work on that idea with you between now and next spring. I
don't think either of us have any idea of whether or not we would be successful, but I felt when I was in the Peace that the issue of input credits was the largest single impediment to people being able to solve the problems themselves. When you have to solve the problem yourself at 30 percent interest, it's basically like gambling for a living. So I think your idea is good, and I'd be pleased to work on it with you.

J. Weisgerber: Well, I think that's as good a response as not only I but also the farmers could hope for today.

I want to clarify now about crop insurance, because I think there are some misconceptions around
crop insurance. I think it's an area where statistics can tend to be a bit misleading. I don't suggest that someone is deliberately misleading; it's just that the crop insurance has changed quite dramatically.

The basic crop insurance is very inexpensive. I think it's in the neighbourhood of $100 to $150 per
farm or $150 per crop, a commodity -- something like that. It's relatively inexpensive, and one
would predict a major increase in participation in that program. But the reality is also that that basic
coverage provides for 60 percent of production to be insured at 80 percent of the projected market price. So what you're really talking about is coverage to a maximum of 48 percent of crops. And that is. . . . It's a basic coverage, and I guess it's not a bad coverage for $100 or $175. But, at the end of the day, it isn't going to provide the kind of insurance that we might anticipate having on our automobile or on our home to provide us with protection against the loss.

I want to get clarification, before I get too far into that issue of coverage, about the statement the
minister made earlier about crop insurance paying $20 an acre if weather prevents planting. I wonder if, perhaps before we get into these other things about premiums on crop insurance, etc., if the minister can clarify for my benefit -- I'm sure the farmers understand it -- how that crop insurance works, and how it would be applied in the situation we're discussing with respect to the Peace country this year.

Hon. C. Evans: First, I want to say that the hon. member can certainly be excused if he doesn't
understand it. It took me three minutes of asking questions to make sure I had it right, but exactly
what I said is true. Tier 1, which is basic insurance, which is $100 per crop per farm. . . . You pay
your $100 and by March 15 in a given year, you have to declare to crop insurance how many acres you intend to seed. Now, if you say that you're going to seed ten acres and pay your crop insurance by March 15, and then are unable to seed that ten acres and the date by which you can seed anything passes and crop insurance comes and certifies that in fact you couldn't because of weather conditions, then you have $200 coming.

Now that I've just said that to the hon. member, I'm going to turn around and ask staff to nod yes or no. Is that exactly right? That's generally right, which is as close as I get.

There are a couple of other things that I need to say. Firstly, the hon. member pointed out that you're getting 60 percent of 80 percent and it's really 48 percent. We're talking basic crop insurance here, and the biggest criticism. . . . I'm in the front of the room, and there are 200 people in the room and they're all saying to me: "The thing is broken because it's crop insurance, not disaster insurance, and here in the Peace, we need disaster insurance. We need insurance that all of us can afford -- not just the richer of us or the more gambling of us, but that everybody can afford -- that will kick in in case nothing happens, in case we are wiped out, so that we don't lose our farm." They interpreted crop insurance to be a product that you go buy; you go take it off the shelf.

You know, the hon. member talked about car insurance. That's right. You go buy your car
insurance; you want to cover your whole car. But you make that decision. When you buy basic car
insurance, you just cover the other driver. You have the option to buy various kinds of car insurance. Well, that's what the farmers think crop insurance is. It's an entrepreneurial thing. "I'm a business person. I get to decide. I get to get off the shelf the kind of insurance I need to cover the kind of crop I want to grow."

But disaster insurance is something that we can all afford and that will cover us all. Hon. member,
those are exactly the kinds of changes we made over the course of the winter so that we would
come to March 15 this year, with people being able to buy in at a very nominal cost in case the
second shoe fell.

J. Weisgerber: Just to add to the confusion, in reviewing the press release announcing the crop
insurance -- the December 3, 1996, press release -- it suggests that there would be a premium of
$100, plus $75 for each crop. So it goes on and on in terms of being a program. . . . I'm not being
critical at all. It's just that crop insurance is very, very complicated, and I guess it will remain so.

I don't want the minister to think I was being critical of the basic coverage. What I was drawing to
the attention of anyone who might read these debates is that to say that last year 30 percent of the
farmers had crop insurance and that this year 70 percent have basic crop insurance, and therefore
we've more than doubled the participation in crop insurance, is not a very good comparison to
make. That's the only point I wanted to make with respect to basic crop insurance.

I will ask one other question. Given this experience, I would expect that in future, if I were a farmer, I would be very optimistic in March about the number of acres that I was going to plant if I lived in the Peace. I wonder if that is just a feature of the program. Are you limited in any way to
declaring. . . ? Is there something that would inhibit someone from being particularly optimistic about their spring planting?

Hon. C. Evans: The hon. member might be right, but there are two things here mitigating against
manipulating the program. Firstly, $20 is nothing; $20 is a very small amount of money. No one
would not seed an acre of ground in order to make $20. Secondly, we have people who go out and inspect crop damage or disasters. They have to be able to take somebody out and show them that, in fact, they didn't seed this acre. This acre isn't making them any money, because of some reason on the ground, and the inspector has to be able to see it. If every single year, you listed 100 percent of your acreage that you intended to seed in order to make the $20, that would be fine, but then you'd have to be able to take the inspector out and show them the 50 acres you couldn't seed because it was too wet.

J. Weisgerber: That's fair enough. I raise the point for this reason. Time and time again, we've
heard from farm organizations, individual farmers and ministry officials that one of the reasons crop
insurance doesn't work is that people start to farm for crop insurance rather than for their products,
and therefore farm insurance becomes increasingly expensive, premiums go up, and then people
don't buy the coverage, because their neighbour is farming crop insurance -- as the saying goes. So
whenever I see a new program, I start to wonder how someone would go about farming this
particular program. So I ask the question, and I have an answer. I guess there's no point in me
belabouring that.

What I want to do now is talk about the so-called plus coverage -- that is, a farmer, having decided to buy the basic insurance now has the choice, as the minister so eloquently described, or the opportunity to come in and buy additional coverage. As I understand it, one of the changes in crop insurance is that the premium for the additional coverage is now payable on filing of the
seeded-acreage report on June 21, whereas previously an application for insurance was included
when the seeded-crop report was made, but the premium wasn't payable until such time as the
farmer harvested the crop and had the cash available to pay the premium.

[3:30]

So one of the changes to crop insurance is to move the premium payment on the additional coverage up from harvest time to planting time. Of course, given the conversation we've just had, that change couldn't have come at a worse time for farmers in the Peace. I'm wondering. . . . I know that the minister has been lobbied by B.C. Grain Producers and others to extend the payment, and even to offer to finance at government rates, rather than at some usury rates, the payment of that premium until there was some cash flow in the fall. Has the minister responded?

Hon. C. Evans: Well, first, let's make it clear that I think the member and I are talking about the
same thing. The $100 per farm and $75 per crop basic coverage is not what the member is worried about, because pretty much everybody can afford that out of their grocery bill, or something like that. So we're covering off this basic $20 an acre at a cost that everyone can afford. The issue the member is raising is the various kinds of coverage that you can buy by choosing to cover individual crops or to cover a higher percentage around your farm or to cover against hail. Indeed, we ask for them to pay for it up front.

Now, let me tell you my experience as minister before they ever made this change. One of the
biggest issues I dealt with in crop insurance was an individual, actually in my own constituency, with
a history of signing up for crop insurance and not paying for it if he got the crop off, and then
changing the name of the crop insurance applicant next year to another member of his family,
applying for crop insurance and not paying for it if he got the crop off.

In your previous question, the hon. member pointed out that people tend to denigrate the program if the program supports people who farm the program instead of farming the ground. Since insurance is really a product that covers you from the time you put it in the ground to the time you harvest it, and you don't need it after that -- you harvest the crop, you don't need that product. So what we've really said is that you're buying something that's for a period of time, so maybe you should pay for it during that period of time, instead of actually waiting until the year when you crash and then saying: "Well, okay, I'll pay for this year's crop insurance, because I actually intend to collect on it this year, never mind the previous five years."

Hon. member, we're not saying: "You put it in the ground, and you're going to have to pay us on the day you put it in the ground." We're saying that the government's rate, far from being usurious, is 90 days interest free -- which is almost to the fall before we even start charging you interest. So I would suggest that you're at least 50 percent of the way through the period of time that you're trying to cover before you actually have to pay us anything. Not only that, the farmers themselves, I think. . . . You're right, people are saying: "Well, why don't you change the program and make it more like the old way?" But those very same people go to the coffee shop and say: "You know, Jack here is farming the program instead of farming the crop." We're trying to change the program so you can't do that. You actually have to farm the ground.

J. Weisgerber: Well, if there's 90 days, that takes you through to September 20, I think -- July,
August, September 20. The grain producers are suggesting that October 31 is a more likely date at
which they will have harvested. I mean, September 20 just takes them to the middle of harvest at the very best. So I'm looking for and hoping that there will be some response to the grain producers saying: "Well, you're going to have 90 days free interest -- if that's what the deal is -- and for the next 45 days we're going to carry you at 5 or 6 percent or something like that." I don't think you'd find anybody argue very vigorously with you over that.

[S. Orcherton in the chair.]

I think there are ways to deal with the kinds of problems the minister describes. The crop insurance
could certainly be a charge against the land, and you simply don't get insurance until you've paid the
last premium. I'm not particularly interested in that debate, if the minister wants to pursue it. I'm just
saying that given that the next 24 months in the Peace is probably the worst possible time to change
the payment date for crop insurance, if you can find some way with 90 days interest-free and a
nominal interest charge through to November 1, I expect that we'll hear a very good, very positive
response from the people in the Peace.

I assume by the lack of response that that's what we can anticipate will happen.

Two issues I want to cover with you. One is the issue of what is referred to by the Peace River
regional district as endemic weed control. I don't know if that's exactly the way I would put the
words together, but the problem that exists here is that the province owns road allowances, hydro
rights-of-way -- although I think it's a problem to a lesser degree -- road rights-of-way, Crown
lands, riparian lands along rivers, etc., that are infested with weeds. They are infested to the degree
that none of the agencies would permit a private landowner to maintain their lands in the condition
with respect to weeds that public lands are maintained.

The province has said to the regional district: "Well, we're not going to look after them anymore.
That's your problem." Effective 1998 we simply are not interested, as I understand it, in participating in weed control on the lands we own. At the same time, legislation permits the regional district to hire somebody to go in with a swather and take out a crop, if the farmer doesn't control those same weeds on their property. So it seems to me quite an incredible double standard that government takes with respect to weed control, and I wonder if the minister has any response.

Hon. C. Evans: Staff think the percentage of the total cost in the Peace that used to be contributed
by the province is approximately 16 percent. The province has withdrawn that 16 percent. We've
withdrawn our funding to the regional district to deliver the program.

First, let me say in complete sympathy that that's an unfortunate event. Secondly, the hon. member
suggests that the Crown is operating under a double standard here -- I think those might even have
been his words -- because there are weeds growing on Ministry of Highways rights-of-way and the
like, and the ministries aren't looking after their land.

If that's the case, then I think it's highly unfortunate. The way the regional district operates, they can
go and spray your land if they have to, and then they can get the money off your taxes, but since the
Ministry of Highways doesn't pay taxes, they can't do that. If in fact there's a double standard with
provincial ministries not looking after land that the provincial ministries are responsible for in the
Peace, exacerbating that 16 percent into a much higher number, then I would ask the hon. member
to go home, take some photographs and come back, and you and I will go visit each and every one
of those ministers and make the point that their ministry has to be looking after their land at least as
well as municipalities and private landowners are being asked to.

J. Weisgerber: I appreciate the undertaking. I'll take the minister up on it.

Just to reinforce the urgency, the Peace River regional district has adopted a resolution to abandon
noxious weed control in 1998 unless there is participation from government. So once again, if that
happens, the group of people that will pay the price are the adjacent landowners. No matter how
hard they try to keep their land weed free, weed seeds will simply blow in out of the ditches, etc.
What we will have succeeded in doing as government, in the larger sense, is moving the responsibility from the province to the regional government and back to the individual, who has the misfortune -- or the good fortune in the Peace -- to have a road running past their property. As people look at the roads, they may well start to view them as misfortunes, rather than the traditional good fortunes. But the minister is giving me an undertaking, and I will follow up on that.

The final issue that I want to touch base with the minister on. . . . Over the last number of years,
probably almost as many years as I've been in Victoria, I've had a discussion with the Minister of
Agriculture around the forage seed initiative.

Hon. C. Evans: Before we get to forage seed, I just want to address this question about the
municipality abandoning their spraying program.

It is thoroughly appropriate that municipalities be involved in weed control. In fact, that's the way it is all the way across western Canada. We are not the only agrarian economy in western Canada, and in all the other provinces there is a municipally driven program. In the main, I think it's even 100
percent. Is that true? They nod. Yes, that's true.

What isn't okay is if the municipality walked away from the program. I think that would be the
anomaly. That would be the only place in western Canada where municipalities decide not to have
some responsibility for what's going on.

What I'm committing to is that the province has to behave like a good landlord. We ask the
municipalities to do so; we have to do so. We have to look after our rights-of-way so that the
problem doesn't move as weeds from government land onto private land. But to unilaterally walk
away from the private land issue would be creating a whole other problem.

J. Weisgerber: I just want to make a point, and I know the member for Shuswap would like to get into the debate, because I suspect this covers far more than the Peace region.

The only response I would have for the minister is that my suspicion is that the province -- whether it be Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba -- makes contributions to municipal programs, and regional governments in turn supply the service, if you like. I don't believe. . . . I will find out -- and I'm sure the minister will before we go at this again -- how much each province contributes to their
municipalities for the purpose of weed control, because that's the real issue.

In looking at a related issue in Alberta, municipal or regional governments -- county governments --
provide road services, but they provide them with money that comes by way of a grant from the
ministry of transportation and highways. The regional district in the Peace region -- and, I expect, in
others -- provides weed control programs. They just feel that the 16 percent the province was
contributing was insufficient to cover weed control on public lands owned by the province and to
withdraw from that entirely was unfair. I think the minister has agreed with that.

[3:45]