Mr. Speaker, it is good to speak to this most important and critical issue tonight. I have one message for the government: It is absolutely critical that we get the border open and get it open now. We do not have a month or two months. We only have days left before this whole industry will go down the river. We do not need to hear any more about how good our testing is or how wonderful we do in the world. That is important for consumer confidence and we have heard that message time and time again but what we need now is action from the government. We need the border opened up, we need confidence put back with our trading partners, and we need it today.
I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Medicine Hat, my neighbour and colleague.
Our cattle and beef producers cannot withstand this issue for any extended length of time. They have been through years of drought. We have seen issues with the high dollar and with the country of origin labelling being thrown at them. One thing after another has been thrown at them and now this issue, an issue where science has proven us right. There is not a problem in this country with our beef. Let us do whatever is necessary to get that border reopened, get our trading partners back on side and let us get to work.
When we asked the minister today in the House of Commons what exactly the criteria was for the U.S. to reopen the border we did not get an answer. We also asked what the timeline was going to be to get the job done. We did not get an answer for that. Those are the answers that we need, our consumers need, our customers need and certainly the industry needs, and we need the answers now. If this thing carries on there will be a snowball effect that will be absolutely disastrous. The government had better realize that if panic starts in this industry and the bankers lose confidence that it can be overcome, we will have a big problem.
I sent a letter to the Prime Minister last week and asked him to make sure that the resources needed would be thrown at this and that there would be no shortage of people or whatever was needed to make sure the testing was done. I asked him to make sure that the fan out was finished, that confidence was restored to our consumers and our customers and that this industry gets back on the road.
We have seen tonight just a bit of what is happening with the overemphasis on our testing. I agree that testing is critical for consumer confidence. It is there. I have no doubt that our industry is safe and I have never stopped eating Alberta beef for one day.
I want to talk about the feedlot industry because it is in my riding. There are 950,000 head of cattle in this country on feed. Over half of them are in my riding or in southern Alberta. I know these people and I know how hard they work to maintain a clean industry and to maintain safety.
Let us look at the stats over the last few years for importing cattle from the U.S. into Canada. The producers have been telling the government for years that we have to bring in more cattle from the U.S. to calm the Americans down. They do not like to see our fat cattle go down there by the truckload and very few coming back. One year when it had the ability that industry brought in 200,000 head of cattle, quadrupling the number that comes in on an ordinary basis. It did that on its own just to show that it would buy these cattle if the opportunity was there.
We have been talking about the terminal feedlot protocol for years but it is not happening and it needs to happen. The U.S. is our closest trading partner. It buys 70% of what we produce. If we cannot ship it to the U.S. we do not have enough people in Canada to eat it. Therefore it is absolutely critical that we start this process and get that border opened up as soon as we can.
We are facing potential layoffs. I think the member for Medicine Hat might talk about this. He has a huge plant in his riding where a lot of this beef is processed. This plant has 2,500 employees and half of them will be laid off next week. This will have a snowball effect right across, not only in western Canada but in northwest U.S. A lot of the beef we produce goes down to Hyrum, Utah; Pasco, Washington; and Greeley, Colorado, and if that beef does not show up there they will have a problem.
Let us look at Canada. The spinoff effects on the trucking industry, the auction mart industry, the feed industry and on the people who grow barley and the people who grow the silage that goes into this will be absolutely incredible. One hundred feed train loads of barley go into southern Alberta into feedlot alley every day. That has created an industry in itself which has created a feeder industry into the feedlot business that is absolutely incredible.
Let us look at what else could happen to auction marts, to trucking firms and feed sales. Right now $11 million a day is being lost, which is $4 billion in a year. The numbers are astronomical. There are 950,000 to 1 million cattle and feedlots alone with over half of that in southern Alberta. We produce two and a half times more beef than we can consume. We need customers but we need our customers to have confidence in our product. The world needs to know that we have a safe product.
I believe our beef is safe and I will never stop eating it. I would not hesitate for a minute to feed it to my family or my grandchildren. However the markets are important and that confidence has to be restored.
There are 85,000 families in this country that make a living by raising cattle on cattle ranches, cattle farms, and 60,000 of those farms are in jeopardy because of this one issue. It is one cow. We must get it in perspective. It is one cow out of millions and we have shut down the border. We must get the criteria that is needed, get it done and get that border reopened. Everything else will take care of itself.
The people in this industry, all the way from the cow-calf guys, are very concerned. I just had a call from a rancher in southern Alberta who is very concerned. They will not be hitting the wall until fall when they have their yearlings or spring calves to get rid of but they realize that their customers, the people who will buy these animals, are in trouble right now. They need help and they need this border reopened.
This is a huge industry in southern Alberta and I believe they police themselves very well. They do a tremendous job of raising safe food and they go through the exercises to make sure that happens. I received letters from a couple of producers I have known for a long time who raise a lot of cattle in the area. They put out a scenario, which I think is important for us to put into perspective, as to what is happening right now as we speak.
The cattle inventory values dropped $100 a head in the first week of May 21-22. That week is past. During the second week cattle inventories will drop another $50 a head. That is $150 a head times 950,000 head in lots. Do the math. We are talking about a lot of money that has gone down the drain already. If we get into week three with more fear and uncertainty, it will cause complete market panic. If that does happen, the value of cattle will plummet. We are talking $350 to $500 a head, a huge amount; $500 million gone that will never come back.
This whole industry has been built on the sweat and hard work of people forever raising cattle. The big cattle ranches and cow-calf operations are what made people go out west. There are huge tracts of grassland. It has the best grass to feed cattle in the world. It is the people who invested their time, energy and their years building that industry who have made it second to none anywhere in the world. We need the cow-calf guy on the ground. We need the people who are finishing it.
We had a great system when the markets were there but in the last couple of years we have had the drought, the country of origin labelling threat and the high dollar which has taken 16% out of this industry in a few months. When a dollar shoots up that fast without anything holding it back it creates problems. People do not have enough time to adjust their inventories to make the changes they need to stay feasible. That happens in all export markets, not just in this industry.
However if these things continue to happen tumbleweeds will be blowing down the streets of many towns and cities in western Canada. The dollars that are turned over in this cattle feeding industry alone are absolutely huge and it keeps communities alive and keeps them going. Nothing creates as much wealth. Some 23% of all agriculture sales out of this country are in the cattle industry.
Let us do some things. Let us get that border open. We will do that by building confidence in our consumers and in our customers. We need to restore confidence in our producers and in the world. The most important people in whom we need to restore confidence are the bankers who bankroll these people. These people still have expenses and still need to feed their cattle as they grow but there is no income coming in.