Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. His statistics for Alberta really are extraordinary. I looked at some of the figures for cattle across the country; the predominance of Alberta among the provinces with respect to cattle, particularly beef cattle, is quite extraordinary.
On the other hand, there are millions of cattle in Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere in the country, as he well knows. Also, in my riding I am very conscious of the fact that we are dealing here with ruminants, as he knows. There is the beef industry as such and the dairy industry, which is kind of related, but there are sheep. We have substantial sheep farms in my area and we have goats. I have one very well established buffalo farm of 60 years or so in my riding, which is also being affected by this.
First I want to applaud what the member said. Anything we can do to deal with this BSE crisis, we should do. The thing that concerns me is that in terms of science there is no sense to it and in terms of health there is no sense to it. We are left with politics. I know that we have opposition parties on that side of the House and the government on this side, but what we are actually left with is U.S. politics and Canadian politics.
Truly, what does the member think we have to do to persuade the Americans to open the border, which, as he knows, is the only solution?