Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate tonight. I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Winnipeg North Centre. From the number of my colleagues in the NDP caucus here tonight we can see how seriously we feel about the issue. Some of them will be taking part in the debate later on.
It is good that we are having this debate because I believe many Canadians genuinely feel the issue is of more concern to them than it appears to be to us as politicians, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the government.
I am not saying that is the case but from the faxes, phone calls, letters and e-mails some of us have been receiving Canadians are extremely concerned about the possibility of a foot and mouth outbreak in North America, and specifically in our country.
They know from the farming community that potentially billions of dollars are at stake. Some of them from Saskatchewan and Alberta who are familiar with what we call feedlot alley in the Lethbridge area know of the hundreds of thousands of cattle that are there and of the damage that would ravage that sector if indeed this virus were to spread to our country.
Canadians from whom I have heard would like more detail from the government. I listened carefully to the two ministers who spoke this evening and welcomed the commitments they made and contributed to the debate. Canadians would like reassurances. They would like to know when travellers are returning from international trips that without exception they are using the disinfectants supposedly at airports. I will have a little more to say about that in a few minutes.
Overall they would like to know what are the rules of the game. What is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency doing in this regard? What is requested by customs and immigration of their employees? Canadians are saying that they will let us know from a firsthand basis if those instructions are being followed.
Yesterday I received a call from a constituent in the Moose Jaw area who hauls a lot of cattle throughout western Canada and into the States. He reported a conversation he recently had with an American border guard. She asked him how he thought the vigilance against the potential for foot and mouth disease was going. He said that he did not think it was going all that well and she assured him that it was not.
I am reassured by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Minister of National Defence, but I can tell the House that Canadians are very concerned about a potential outbreak. We know that students in western Canada have cancelled trips to Europe, specifically to the U.K. They may be out some money as a result, but they have done it because they do not want to be in any way responsible for bringing home this contagious disease.
Just as an aside, we know that Air Canada is reviewing on a case by case basis that some individuals have initially been told they will not get their entire refunds back. My office has been in touch with Air Canada today, which told us that it would look at it on a case by case basis. In a situation like that of the students from the Edmonton area and from Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, I think they will get full reimbursement at the end of the day.
Our office was in touch with someone else today who reported that he had landed in Vancouver about a week ago from Belgium and Holland. He was pulled out of the line when he said that he had been on a farm in the past 14 days and was going to a farm because that was his job. He said that he was asked a lot of very good questions, but he was never asked to use disinfectant.
In this case the gentleman in question had taken precautions before he left Holland. He had dry cleaned his clothing, sanitized his footwear, showered and did all the necessary things. However the fact of the matter was that he was not requested to walk on the disinfectant pad when he landed at Vancouver airport.
Was this just an isolated case or not? I quote from a reporter or a writer named Morris W. Dorosh who wrote in an Agriweek article dated yesterday the following:
The other day I came off an airplane from an international flight at the Toronto airport. It was the end of the spring school break and the place was even more crowded than usual. People were coming through Canada Customs four or five abreast. An official of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency stood beside this human river meekly inquiring whether anyone had any meat products from abroad. Not one passenger in five even noticed him. Diseases and infections of all kinds are ultimately spread by people. It is now believed that foot and mouth disease was brought into the United Kingdom in the luggage of an airline traveller from China who passed through the customs inspection process without detection and subsequently provided the meat to a Chinese restaurant in northeast England. The infection may have been active for 10 or 15 days before the first diagnosis.
It is not just an isolated case. Canadians want to be assured that there are rules out there and that they are being adhered to religiously.
In my riding I am privileged to represent the air base in Moose Jaw. Last week concerns over foot and mouth disease in Europe had inspectors scouring British made jets that were arriving. This is the NATO flight training centre that has been converted to a 15 wing base. They have taken delivery of several training jets coming from England aboard Russian cargo planes. Precautions were taken to ensure that there was no soil on the crew members' shoes. Their inflight garbage stayed on board and the wooden crates used to carry the wings of the jets were in fact burned.
I know that the member for Brandon—Souris has said that this would be an non-partisan debate. I certainly intend to abide by those Marquess of Queensberry rules, but I will refer to a call that the NDP caucus initially received and which my office returned. It was from a veterinarian in Ontario who expressed a great deal of concern about the fact that the provincial government seemed to be shifting responsibility from veterinarians to what they call lay inspectors.
There is a cost factor involved. They are alleging that it is too expensive to have vets. This is particularly prevalent at community auction sales during pre-sale screenings of livestock where they segregate the animals that appear to be less than sound. They are then quarantined or set aside for a vet to examine at a later time.
The veterinarian is extremely concerned. He is working in this area himself, but he notes that there is basically no formal training going on for so-called lay inspectors. There are very serious implications for food and animal safety in the opinion of this veterinarian. He is urging that the government of Ontario seriously look at reassessing what is being done in terms of the lay inspectors who are replacing the vets at these auction sales.
The Canadian cattle industry and particularly the Canadian Animal Health Coalition have been in the forefront of facilitating discussions among the industry and the CFIA to plan in case the disease does get here. They deserve a lot of credit because they have come up with a plan for a voluntary cease movement which has been approved by the Animal Health Coalition for immediate development. They have also worked in conjunction with the Mexicans and the Americans.
I see that my time is up so I cannot go into the details on the Canadian Animal Health Coalition, but it deserves a lot of credit for the work it has done.