Mr. Chair, I will be splitting my time with the member for Brandon—Souris.
We have spent the last couple of days talking about BSE and all we have heard is one excuse after another, and we still have no answers. The fact remains that after all this talk our farmers are still hurting and something needs to be done about it.
On behalf of the cattle farmers with whom I have spoken, I need to express the lack of public confidence in the ability of the government to handle this BSE crisis. The tremendous cynicism out there is completely understandable and the facts, unfortunately, justify the loss of faith in the government's competence.
Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs have been lost since May 20, 2003, when BSE was found in one Alberta cow and the U.S. closed its border to all beef products and live cattle as a result. Thirty other countries followed suit.
Two facts bear repeating because they show how mishandled and neglected this issue has been by the Liberal government. Fact number one: there was only one cow. Fact number two: this happened back in May 2003. Here we are 17 months later and, while some cuts of beef are now being allowed to flow south, live cattle is still being banned.
Can anyone sitting on the government benches tell me with a straight face that they think the government's efforts to get our border reopened for exports of Canadian beef have been that effective?
A few weeks ago when I was at the Lincoln county fair in my hometown of Beamsville, a cattle farmer told me bluntly that too much time without any progress has passed for him and many others. He is getting out of the cattle business because the government has done absolutely nothing to deal with the terrible crisis.
From the outset the government had no real plan and, in its arrogance, it ignored the plan that the Conservative Party presented. This side of the House proposed strategies to increase domestic slaughter capacity, to diversify our export markets and to better manage the market capacity through methods such as using more funding to keep surplus cattle fed through the fall. Major industry groups echoed the plans put forward by our party.
What action did our beef and cattle industry get from the government? Seasons changed but nothing else did. The crisis has grown and, as the government trumpeted hollow words about reopening the borders, the fact remains that just because one wants it to happen does not mean it will happen. We need a realistic plan, and please, all partisanship aside, our party welcomes the Liberals to talk to our MPs on the BSE advisory panel so that we can implement this plan to lead to concrete results.
For the members on the opposite side, the so-called plan announced by the Minister of Agriculture on September 10 is too little, too late. This $488 million plan is less than half of what the Conservative Party determined was needed last February. The need has grown since that time because again the government did nothing to help with this industry. The dairy farmers of Canada say that there is nothing for them in the proposal. The money allocated to increase slaughter capacity is barely enough to support one plant, let alone stimulate the entire industry.
Where is the funding for those with practical plans to increase slaughter capacity? Time is running out to get the new plan initiatives started for this fall.
Perhaps the one component of the Liberals' BSE plan that has contributed the most to their lack of credibility was pretending that there was actually new money available under the transitional industrial support program to sustain the industry. The Minister of Agriculture knew the deadline for applications for payments was July 31, 2004, and applications are no longer being accepted. Reannouncing existing programs does nothing to help the struggling cattle industry. What was done was temporarily giving people false hope.
The final insult to producers who wanted to apply for some of the limited cash made available was that a month after the program announcement was made, there were no application forms available. It is fairly obvious that this was not so much a plan to help cattle producers as it was a communication strategy to give the appearance of government action.
If the Minister of Agriculture wants to focus on a communications plan, we would welcome some practical efforts on his part to effectively communicate to the U.S. government that science shows our beef is safe. This is a political problem that has been mismanaged for 17 months.
Our cattle industry cannot afford any further delays. Again I ask the members on the government side to listen and to cooperate with our party in resolving the BSE crisis.
If the government continues on the path it has been on for the last year and a half, we will be having the same debate again next spring and the livelihood of thousands of additional cattle producers will have disappeared forever. Do not let arrogance get in the way of doing what is right.
