'Tuesday, WMar h 712,_19fl§§

tention of the Provincial Secretary, to you, Mr. S eaker that i '

question I raised on the floor of the House a few pdays ago andsitcgrslciloriid‘einitrlig farmers who operate one or more trucks in their farming operations. To describe an average case, a man who has one or two used trucks or half-ton trucks that they use .in the spring of the year to haul fertilizer, lime, seed, or what have you. Then again they could be used in the haying season following the spraying season with a water tank mounted on it or in the harvest season with the grain box and so on in the potato harvesting season. deliver potato bags, to help to cover most of the growmg season from May to November. Yet there’s no special concession given to that farmer. He’s using a vehicle which is in no sense of the imagination a com- merclal vehicle yet it’s more or less doing the work of an ordinary farm tractor. He IS unable to use farm gas in it. He has to pay the same type of insurance for registration so this has been a problem of farmers in that category for a long time so I trust that the Provincial Secretary would give this serious consideration and see if there’s not some way of easing this, for this particular type of farmer and there’s quite a few of them. And speaking of the financial problems today you will always find. Mr. Speaker, whether in good times or in poor times a relative small per- centage of farmers who always have a financial problem. They are more or less the inner and outer group, you know. They’re always with us but this condition is dif- ferent today. We are all more or less in the same boat and I’ve been thinking, God help us if this boat should capsize. Today more than ever before farmers are looking to the Government, whether it’s Federal or Provincial, for some type of direction or guidance in getting our economic train back on the rails. I have no hesitation in saying that any attempt made by the Government would have the approval and the honest support of every Member of this side of the House. A few days ago, on Wednesday last it was, the Premier made a statement with reference to a meeting of the Federation of Agriculture referring in particular to farmers who were in a particular financial position. It was the intention, he said, of asking the Federal Government to implement this Bill N0. 818 which is. I am told, is an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act. I wonder if the Premier really knows the full implications of what would happen, just where the move would place many of our Island farmers. Now, my age group, Mr. Speaker, it would place me among the older Members of this Legislature and I, for one, can recall quite vividly the effects of the Farmers Credit Arrangement Act of the late 1930’s. This Act, as you recall, was a form of bankruptcy for the farmers. The idea, I guess, like a lot of other Federal Statutes was introduced for a good purpose and with a good thought in mind but if you recall at that time the effects of the Farmers Credit Arrangement Act not only helped the farmers but it paralized credit right across the board. I know at that time I was only after buying a farm from my brother. I can’t recall if it was 1937, 1938, 1939 one of those years. It was in a good farming area down in the Belfast district and the price was $2,250. We had to look for a $1.000 to complete the payment of it. My own farm at home at that time was a 200 acre farm. It was a free and possibly by the yard stick of that time was one of the better, a good deal better than the average farm. I couldn’t raise $1,000 come hell or high water. The people who had loaned money on such loans as notes and mortgages, they were paid off at ten and twenty and thirty cents on the dollar so if this Bill 818 has no better aspects in it than a repititien of the Farmers Credit Arrangement Act I think they should take another very hard look at it. Now. I must mention the Acres Report presented to the House a few days ago in no less than eleven volumes. What this cost the Province we have yet to learn but a much bigger question is, what value can we expect from it? In the opinion of a lot of people this report too will join its predecessors as dust catchers in some attic storeroom or are we to consider the Acres Report as a preliminary to the main event? I refer now to the report of the Economic Improvement Corp. Is it still beginning, never ending? One expensive survey after another. Our Premier tells us that this is not costing this Province one cent. A statement like this, Mr. Premier, one must take with a proverbial grain of salt. Every dollar that comes from a Federal purse is our money. We are partners in Confederation and as such we are entitled to our fair share and as proof of such a statement, have you ever heard any former Government say that the Island, as such, ever got a full share of what should have been coming to us from Ottawa? So when a Member of the Govern- ment states that such and such is costing the Island nothing is, to my mind, just a lot or bologna. However, not being partisan in any way, we hope and trust that the results of this report by the Economic Improvement Corp. may have a far-

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