“Mr. Speaker, I did not expect to be speaking to the issue of pork in Manitoba, but I cannot help myself in responding to the hon. parliamentary secretary. The history there is fascinating. We should learn the lessons. It was Pierre Trudeau who killed the Crow rate, which made it harder for prairie farmers to ship out their grain. That led to a glut of grain on the Prairies, which meant asking, “What do we do with all of this grain?” They put it in mega hog barns, with thousands of sows in the same barn, and fed them the grain, because if they could not ship the grain out, they could ship the hogs out. Where did they go? They are not local food security for Manitoba. Only 10% are consumed in Canada. Most are shipped out. Millions of live pigs are shipped to the United States, bringing us back to the same argument we are making here. They are not processed in Canada. Live pigs are sent to Iowa, where they are fattened up, fed lots of drugs and slaughtered. Meanwhile, the hog barns have so contaminated Lake Winnipeg that it is dying.”
Statement grade
A
The average of Signal, Relevance, Respect and Clarity.
Average 92 / 100
A score under 50 is red. Choose a measurement to see where it lost points and why; choose it again to clear.
Positioning 26%Claims 74%
This view breaks the statement into its steps and names what each one does.
Mr. Speaker, Positioning · 32 wordsI absolutely, totally disagree with the leader of the Green Party.She should be talking to people in the Manitoba pork industry and get a better sense of where it is today.PositioningClaims · 57 wordsI have been on this file since the nineties, when we had the hog barn issue.1The reason we have two million piglets going to the United States is that we do not have enough barns in the prairie provinces, particularly in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.2There is a movement afoot to expand the number of farming facilities.Positioning · 7 wordsThe member undercut such an important industry.PositioningClaims · 46 wordsWe are talking about 10,000 direct jobs in the province of Manitoba because of the pork industry.3That is not to mention indirect jobs.If they go out to Brandon and Neepawa, not to mention Winnipeg, they will see the impact the pork industry is having.Positioning · 7 wordsIt is very real and very tangible.PositioningClaims · 26 wordsI suspect that there are thousands of people, including the premier of the province, who would be upset with the leader of the Green Party’s comments.
