Madam Speaker, I am rising to follow up on a question that I asked on March 14 which dealt with the ongoing existing crisis in Canadian agriculture.
Today I want to turn to an incipient crisis, a crisis that all Canadians and parliamentarians of all stripes want to avoid and to prevent by any means available to us. I am speaking of the potential for the foot and mouth outbreak in Europe to spread to this country. The risk from foot and mouth disease can scarcely be overstated. The economic impact the disease could have if it were to spread to Canada can scarcely be overrated.
Just looking at the province of Ontario 1996 production figures, we see that 24% of all farms in Ontario were beef farms and that 14% were dairy farms. Looking at my own riding of Lanark—Carleton, 60% of the farms in Lanark county, which make up about half the riding, were either beef or dairy. There were 130 dairy farms, 364 beef farms and 28 farms described as livestock combination and probably included one or the other.
In the part of my riding that has now been incorporated into the megacity of Ottawa, the township of West Carleton, a little over 50% of agricultural production is in beef or dairy. A disease that affects ruminants would have a tremendously damaging impact on my riding.
Looking at the 1952 outbreak in Saskatchewan of foot and mouth disease, which very fortunately hit only 42 farms before it was contained, caused $7 million of damage in today's dollars. However things have changed. The impact of this disease would be far more severe if it happened in Canada today because beef is such a prominent export for us. We could expect that borders would be shut for exports of Canadian beef.
Some countries, if faced with a foot and mouth outbreak, can continue to supply their domestic market, but in the case of Canada such an enormous amount of beef is exported that it is a crucial part of our industry. We would see tremendous damage done if there were to be an outbreak here. As a result I take this issue very seriously.
I attended the debate last night and listened with great interest to all speakers. I was involved last week in a press conference in which a number of Canadian Alliance MPs spoke to the issue. This week I am running ads in two newspapers in my riding on the subject to advise farmers of some of the things they can do. This includes alerting them to the government website that deals with taking preventive measures on their farms.
What I see being done is excellent in terms of slurry mats at airports, the turning back of British military vehicles and so on. However I am very concerned with the consistency with which these measures are being applied. We hear reports that they are not applied across the board. That worries me greatly as I know it does all members.
What is being done to ensure consistency of the application of these measures? Moreover, what is being done to ensure that information on measures individuals can take is being disseminated to Canadians?