Mr. Speaker, we are here tonight debating Motion No. P-3 in regard to the production of papers requested by the hon. member for Lakeland. He had requested that the Minister of Health produce papers with regard to the use of 2% and 5% solutions of strychnine and the studies on their effect on the income of Canadian farmers.
The reply came back from the minister that no studies were done on the economic impact on Canadian farmers of the withdrawal of the registration of the concentrated strychnine solutions used by farmers to mix their own 4% end use product. We heard the parliamentary secretary talk about how the government was studying the issue and doing research projects.
However the problem remains massive. All the studies in the world at the rate they are being done will not solve the issue for prairie farmers and ranchers.
The member for Lakeland is doing an excellent job in bringing the issues of predator and pest control before the House for debate. Pests and predators are those animals and plants that hinder the production of the very food supply we eat such as grains and meat supplies.
Gophers are pests that cause a lot of damage to fields by making mounds where they dig holes and eat plants. That is what we are debating. The issue is something I grew up with.
My granddad came to Saskatchewan in 1902 from Iowa, Eric Hilstrom and his wife Elsie started the family ranch and homesteaded before Saskatchewan was even a province. There were some gophers around at that time but not to the extent we see now. Agriculture practices facilitated the vast expansion of the gopher population throughout the prairies.
My brother Donald and his wife Gail still operate the family ranch. My other brother Mervin and his wife Isla have a grain operation. I am there every summer. I see the problems they still have with gophers and the issue of the federal government not making products available to the farmers who could control the gopher problem.
As a child growing up, besides hunting gophers which every prairie farmer's son did from time to time, maybe once a summer for a couple of days, we would help a farmer whose field was massively destroyed by gophers. He would put the strychnine product out and kill the gophers off in a couple of days. Then there would be no more strychnine around and as a result there were very limited auxiliary deaths of other animals and birds.
The product was used because it was effective. The member for Lakeland is trying to keep agriculture viable and not have a farmer's bottom line ruined by a pest that should be controlled. No one is asking that gophers be wiped out. Certainly the mascot for the Regina Roughriders should never be touched in this regard.
The issue of the PMRA was raised by the parliamentary secretary. What a mess. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency under the health minister is horrible. It does not have the ability to make decisions. For example, veterinarians bring forward new products to be used for cats and dogs such as antibiotics and other things that need to be passed through the health minister to get approval and be registered. I met with them just this week. They told me that it takes four years from the time they notify the health department for it to say it will look at the product.
Once it starts to do research on it, it takes another four years for it to finish up. It said that our regulatory system of licensing new products is in such a shambles that it is impossible to get a decision out of it. In Manitoba we have a related problem to the PMRA and that is the use of cyanide as a predator control.
We have a massive problem in southern Manitoba with wolves attacking and killing our cattle and ranch animals. For example, Stephen Cook is a rancher from the Steep Rock area who had 85 heifers in a half section pasture. The wolves came in one night in the fall after the lake had frozen over and harassed and killed some animals right on the spot. These were 700 pound to 800 pound heifers. The wolves then drove about 80 on to the ice on the lake. When they got them about four or five miles from shore, the ice was so thin the animals broke through and 25 to 30 of them drowned. After that the rancher had to round up the rest of the animals. Predator control is a massive problem.
I referred to the Cook ranch and the Reykdal ranch along Lake Manitoba. All that is needed is reintroduction of the use of a cyanide gun for predator control. The Manitoba Cattle Producers Association identified as one of its resolutions that it would lobby both provincial and federal governments to have that brought back. Conservation officers do not want to go against their employers, but they say that is the only predator control which works. It is much like the strychnine and gopher issue that the member for Lakeland has brought forth.
I wrote a letter to Oscar Lathlin, the minister responsible for conservation in the province of Manitoba, asking him why we could not have cyanide for the use of controlling wolf populations. Again, it is only used when a problem arises such as the killing of livestock at a given time. The killing may only happen for a week. If we can control it right away and kill off one or two of the wolves, it would be finished. However if we do not take some action and eliminate a couple of wolves out of the killer pack, we end up having them kill for maybe a month or two before they finally move on through their own natural volition.
The minister in Manitoba wrote back to me on July 20, 2000, and said that the existing permit was apparently cancelled because documents forwarded to the federal government were misplaced.
I come back to talking about a health minister who made a series of mistakes and mix-ups, which I guess I should not go into right now, which cost Canadians a massive amount of money. This includes ramming the old gun bill down on us in the west, in the east and in central Canada, which we all resent.
Oscar Lathlin said the federal government misplaced these documents. He alleged that a renewal of the permit was being considered as part of the department's review of all predator control initiatives currently under way. He added that the review would provide recommendations for future programs.
The problem is that the NDP minister and the Liberal government are still wondering what to do while ranchers, farmers, conservation and police officers, and people of average common sense are telling them to bring back the use of cyanide for predator control. It would not be used by individual farmers but by professional conservation officers who are used to dealing with predator control problems.
I have identified the problems. Inevitably, like many other situations in the country, the problem rests right over on that side of the House. It especially rests with the health minister. I will not go into his whole sorry history as a member of the House, but in my opinion we need a new health minister to get on with the corrections that are required in the pest management review agency.