Howard Hilstrom

[Agriculture, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the prices paid for live cattle in Canada are determined by our offshore customers and what they are willing to pay. The United States is our biggest foreign customer, so reopening the border to exports is the key to getting our beef industry back on its feet.

What specific investigative steps and changes to regulations, if any, is the United States demanding before our beef exports will once again flow across the border?

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, we meet here tonight in an emergency debate on an extremely serious issue. The issue is serious not in the area of health or food safety for Canadians. The issue is an economic emergency, an economic crisis that is affecting individual farm families and ranch families that depend on their cattle in particular for their livelihood.

It is not only the cattle producers of the country who have problems with this. It is every agricultural producer who produces ruminant animals. Bison is a growing industry in the country. I have neighbours in my area where I ranch who are exporting bison into the United States. There is a killing plant in North Dakota and from there it goes not only into North America but around the world. It is a delicacy in many areas.

The emergency is the economic well-being of thousands of Canadians and the stress it is putting on farm families, many of whom already have a lot of stress.

I will continue with that issue in just a minute, but I want to point out that when the issue arose on Tuesday and the government made its announcement through the federal Minister of Agriculture and the minister in Alberta, I commended the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and those two ministers in doing what was not done in Great Britain.

In Great Britain when the BSE outbreak happened 17 years ago, they tried to cover it up. They tried to tell the British people that there was no problem. That led to a distrust by consumers of their own government and their own industry. The reputation of farmers sank very low, almost worse than politicians.

In Canada we have a case where Canadians are looking at the reaction not only of the government members but the opposition members, all of whom wanted this emergency debate tonight. They are reassured that they can hear, see and question politicians and get the facts. We should not be believed blindly though. What has happened is that the scientific community and the university community have kicked in and are giving us independent facts.

That was the other problem in Britain 17 years ago. A lot of the science on BSE was unknown. No one had ever heard of this disease. For several years after BSE became known, Britain continued to feed renderings from ruminants back to ruminants and it spread the disease.

We do not do that in Canada. Since 1997 we have outlawed that as a feeding practice. That is why Canadians can be so confident that the food supply in our stores is as safe today as it was before last Tuesday when that case was discovered.

I know the government is working to do the trace-out and determine where the cow came from and where the offspring came from. It is working diligently to determine how the animal happened to come down with BSE and we will have to let that investigation go on.

I mentioned earlier the economic impact on the farm families. The average cattle operation, which relies on cattle and does not rely on grain or anything else, has probably in the neighbourhood of 250 to 500 cows in order to have a half reasonable living for a farm family.

Before last Tuesday, the inventory value for an average family with a small operation was anywhere between $500,000 and $700,000 worth of live animals out in the pasture and in the feedlot. By 4 o'clock on Tuesday afternoon their inventory value was at zero. The auction markets closed. That is what we are dealing with here. That is the importance of this issue.

Farm families have to make mortgage payments and they need to buy food. They spend on all the things that other Canadians, who have paycheques coming in, do. They still have these expenses but in fact they have no cashflow.

The urgency of the debate tonight is to re-establish our ability to export not only to the United States but to all our major customers around the world.

During question period this afternoon the member for Medicine Hat asked the Minister of Agriculture exactly what criteria was needed in order to conform with the requirements of our trading partners, the people to whom we want to sell our meat and our live cattle. The answer was accurate but only partially there. The answer was that they were doing the tracing. Well the investigation is very important but we know that the United States has questioned whether our regulatory system is in fact capable of guaranteeing this level of safe food supply for our exports. That has to be addressed.

We know that certain senators down in the United States have said that the timeframe of four months was too long from the time the animal was slaughtered until the brain tissue was actually examined. I agree that the timeframe was too long but my question and the question from the member for Medicine Hat for the minister was whether that was a requirement. We wanted to know if the United States was asking us to fix that.

The government has to tell Canadian farmers what the criteria is that not only the government has to meet but that they have to meet in order to reopen these borders. Tonight I am hoping that the government members, in consultation with the minister, can expand on just what Ann Veneman, the secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture, has said is the specific criteria that we need to meet in order to start exporting again. Is it more inspectors? Is their HACCP program right? They are criticizing a certain part of it. We know that Senator Dorgan of course is criticizing but we will take that with a grain of salt. However they are not to be taken lightly and that is what we need from the government.

We do not need to be talking about compensation programs right now because there is no compensation program that will be able to cover a livestock industry that is based on exports. There is no market in Canada today because the price for our cows is based on exports. It is not based on a closed domestic market. If it were we would not be worrying about this. It is based on exports and that is why reopening the borders to our trading partners is so important.

Once again I want to emphasize this because it is so important. The government needs to tell farmers, ranchers and all Canadians exactly what it is that will open up that border. That is a reasonable request. If the answer is that they have not really told us specifically, that is fine, that is a legitimate answer, but I believe they may have given some very specific suggestions and I invite the government members, in response to these speeches from the opposition side, to try to cover these and give us some assurance that the border will be open within the next few weeks.

[Agriculture, April 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, that does not change the fact if the farmers do not accept the programs.

Let us talk about the dairy industry for a moment. In 1995 the government signed the WTO agreement that failed to protect Canada from imports of dairy substitutes. The import of butteroil/sugar blends has reduced the market share for Canadian dairy farmers, resulting in lost income.

Why is the government doing nothing to correct its incompetence at the international negotiating table?

[Agriculture, April 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the minister's agricultural policy framework will eliminate the provincial companion programs.

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture is opposed to Ontario signing the implementation agreement because the new programs are less effective. A recent report from the George Morris Centre, paid for by the agriculture minister, will not change the fact that the proposed programs are unacceptable to farmers.

Why would the minister try to impose programs on the provinces that are against the best interests of farmers?

[Canada Airports Act, April 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the member raised the issue of rents. Rents are of particular importance to the operation of an airport because if they are too high the airport will go broke, and of course they cannot pay rent on nothing.

I have to stand up for the city of Winnipeg and for the Winnipeg airport authority because the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia does not seem to be speaking out on behalf of our airport in Winnipeg. The rent there has been a major concern because it will drive that airport authority to the brink of bankruptcy if it proceeds as planned by the government.

I note that in 1997, when our airport authority in Winnipeg took over, the rent was around the $900,000 mark. Now the government wants to drive it up to around the $7 million mark. Just like any tenant, if I am charged more rent that the apartment is worth or what I would pay some place else, I will move and the landlord will have nothing.

What does the member think about the government charging rents that are so onerous that in fact it makes it impossible for one of these airport authorities to continue serving the public and the city that it resides in?

[Canada Airports Act, April 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is with regard to the Winnipeg airport authority. It has been asking for rent reductions from the federal government. I see a part of the bill deals with the government's control over the appointment of boards of directors and airport authorities.

Is the government putting these airport authorities in a no win situation where, if they complain, they stand the chance of having new people placed on the board who will do what the government bids?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, April 2nd, 2003]

The gun bill.

[Agriculture, April 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the minister to phone Mr. Larry MacIntosh in Winnipeg. I am sure he knows who he is and he will hear the same story.

Canadian farmers rely very heavily on trade with the United States and the Prime Minister and deputy minister are making a terrible mess of our trade situation with the U.S.

I would like to know how large a negative economic impact the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Deputy Prime Minister are willing to accept before they speak up about the need to improve relations with our best trading partner and friends.

[Agriculture, April 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, Peak of the Market, a successful Manitoba export business, is feeling the impact of the Liberal government's anti-American actions and statements.

This farmer owned company has had orders from longstanding U.S. customers cancelled. Manitoba farmers and vegetable growers are among the first to feel the economic backlash.

What steps has the agriculture minister taken to improve relations with his U.S. counterpart?

[Supply, March 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I spent 30 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 14 years as a uniformed officer in the rural areas and the other 16 years on proceeds of crime, which had to do with the drug business and with commercial crime.

Handguns have been registered for the last 50 years. I never saw one case that was solved, any of the murders that happened in regard to the drug business or otherwise, by registered handguns.

The gun registry, in my opinion and from my experience, will do nothing to reduce crime in any significant way, but $1 billion sure would have helped those heart attack victims in my riding.