Madam Speaker, according to the rules of the House, we have one issue with which to deal. It arises out of a question that I asked in question period before Christmas. The answer I received was less than full. As a result, I want to raise it again to give the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage an opportunity to expand on the answer and more clearly state what the government's position is.
This concerns the loss of the tuberculosis free status for the Province of Manitoba with regard to our cattle industry in particular. The loss of that status impacts on trade with other provinces as well as the United States. It is very important for Manitoba to regain that TB free status. That is the issue. It is not a question of food safety. Food going out of Manitoba from all livestock, including elk, bison, deer, is not in question. It is a question of animal disease control, and in the case of tuberculosis, it has to be eradicated.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency will go to a ranch where a domestic cattle herd has been identified as having tuberculosis and literally will have all the animals destroyed. That eliminates the disease. The farm or ranch is ultimately repopulated with a clean herd and the business continues on, with no re-infection.
In Manitoba the elk in the area of the Riding Mountain National Park, which comes under the heritage minister's purview in the House, are a reservoir for tuberculosis. When the elk leave the park, they interact with the cattle herds in the surrounding district. There are about 50,000 cattle in the immediate area, so there is quite a bit of contact. The elk herds re-infect the clean cattle herds. The problem is that Agriculture Canada and the CFI are cleaning up the cattle herds but nobody is cleaning up the elk herd inside the Riding Mountain National Park.
The point of my question is why does the plan, which has been developed by Heritage Canada, Agriculture Canada, the Province of Manitoba and the local municipalities, not have in it a specific proactive effort to eradicate the disease from wild elk. Part of the plan is to increase the number of hunting licences and have hunters reduce the number of elk.
There are about 4,000 to 4,500 elk inside the park. Everybody knows and agrees that is the reservoir for the disease. However in this last hunting season of 2002, there were approximately 260 animals taken by hunters. These animals were from all around the park, not just in the hot zones, which are the places where the elk come out and contaminate cattle herds.
Hunting will not reduce the number of elk down to the target level, which I believe the government has said would be about 2,500. There have been 260 taken by hunters, with maybe a few more yet to come. That will not do it.
My question to the Minister of Canadian Heritage is this. Why is something proactive not being done to reduce the number of diseased elk inside the park?