Madam Speaker, it is a privilege and a pleasure for me to speak on this important issue. It is an issue that certainly grips my riding in a way like no other issue I have seen to date since becoming a member of Parliament and being the voice of the riding in the House.
I do not think people in central Canada or in other parts of Canada quite understand the impact that this has in a riding that has a predominance of cow-calf operators, auctioneers, feedlot operators, and the number of truckers who are actually involved in the agriculture industry. I could go on and on to describe just how many people are impacted because of one cow that broke out with the mad cow disease.
My hon. colleague for Peace River just talked about the one farm that was quarantined in his area, actually the farm where the animal was found. We are pleased with the news that came out yesterday with regard to all of the trace-out animals from that herd being negative. It certainly looks like that was the only animal out of 13.4 million cattle in Canada that came down with this disease.
We are hoping that is truly going to be the case in all of the rest of the trace-outs. It is imperative that we do everything that we possibly can and do it as quickly as we can because we are talking about a very short timeline to be able to stop the bleeding from the negative impact of trading with the United States and open up the border as soon as possible and get the cattle moving again.
It is a small window of opportunity before it has some devastating impacts on the industry. I do not think ordinary Canadians quite understand that because they do not understand how the feedlot operation really works. It talks about nickels and dimes, and actual pennies of profits per animal and it is a very tight margin. These margins are based on pounds per day. If an animal stays in the feedlot too long it gets too fat and the quality goes down. It affects things in a significant way and we are talking a small amount of time before an animal has to be moved or the quality is considerably compromised.
I was trying to get a bit of a handle on how it was impacting the individuals in my riding of Yellowhead today. We have three large farms that have been quarantined in my riding. One of the large farms is a 10,000 animal feedlot. The individual who I was talking to was absolutely devastated because his farm was quarantined and it means he cannot move an animal off the farm.
The chance of him having any animals on his farm with BSE is very slim. Nonetheless, he has been put in a compromised situation that is absolutely devastating to him. When I talked to him and asked how it was actually impacting on him, he had a difficult time describing what it was like.
Farmers in western ridings have just come through the most horrendous year that we possibly could imagine. There was the drought situation in our riding last year. They are survivors. They are individuals who have gone to the wall to save their industry. The feedlot operators are paying additional prices for the products they are feeding the animals. It has been a very difficult winter, difficult last summer, and they were just coming into spring and finally getting a little bit of grass growing. Finally there was an opportunity to feed the animals some fresh product in a fresh start to the year, and to be hit by this is absolutely devastating to the industry. I cannot emphasize enough just how that impacts.
There is another thing we must realize about agriculture. In the oil and gas industry, every time there is a primary job lost it has a ripple effect of four other jobs or every time there is a job created it is a one in four or one in three increase, but in agriculture every time we lose a primary job in agriculture the spin-off is one in seven. That means that for every job lost there are seven others that it impacts. So, it is seven other jobs or seven other families.
The ripple effect is massive. It is absolutely imperative that we understand the dynamics of that as we see the crippling effect this one animal has had on the industry and how it could impact it.
Therein lies the reason and the rationale for an emergency debate in the House. We take this very seriously and we do everything we possibly can. That is why we asked the minister today, what will it take with his counterpart in the United States, what criteria have to be met, and what exactly does the industry have to do to be able to open that border up and allow the product to move back and forth and regain some stability?
Hopefully by the end of this week that will happen. However, even with the trace-outs coming back, the opening of the border, and we start to rebuild back to where we were before this disease started, we must know that the government is there to stand beside the industry. We must ensure that the industry knows that the government is there to help and assist as it did with the SARS crisis that has impacted the Toronto area.
We know that it is very important to rebuild the credibility of the Toronto area and all of Canada because of the black mark that has been inflicted because of the SARS disease. The government was there to hand out at least $10 million to bring back the international market. We are certainly expecting a nod from the government. Having the Prime Minister eat a plateful of beef does not quite do it.
Most Canadians have no problem understanding that the beef is safe. That is not the issue. The issue is that the international community must know that. To do that we must put some investments into that to be able to ensure that those markets are rebuilt. If we do not, the devastation and the impact will be phenomenal.
Members might say that this devastation and the impact is a natural thing, that we should expect that. Why would a government treat one industry different than another? Why would the government look at tourism and the impact on that differently than the impact on agriculture? People in my riding are uncertain of what the government is prepared to do as far as standing up for the industry because of what the industry went through in the last year. Last year was a one in 133 year drought. This was a natural disaster that impacted my riding and agriculture in a way that has never happened before.
Yet we saw absolutely nothing coming from the federal government to assist in drought relief in our area. It was a shameful year. It was a year that our farmers more or less shrugged their shoulders and wondered what is actually happening. They wondered if they counted and if they mattered. Are they not Canadians and do they not pay taxes? These are the questions that I get from my riding every day when I talk about representing my constituents and being their voice here in the House of Commons.
It is very important that we get that nod. It is interesting and I listened with great interest this evening as we heard from Liberal members on the other side, in fact, some ministers said that they would be there for the beef industry. I will be holding those ministers to their words. I will say that I heard it here. Canadians have heard it here. It was not very specific, but the indication was there. We will have to make it specific so that the people in my riding will know that the government will not treat them as second class citizens. They want to know that the government will be there to assist them in their time of need. Believe me this is a time of need.
In this debate we must understand, that although it was one animal, that the survivors, the farmers in my riding and the industry, they are survivors because they are very aggressive. They are survivors because they are proactive. One of the things that will save this industry is the proactive measure that farmers have provided and that is the identification of animals. Last July this became compulsory. Due to that compulsory tagging we can follow a product from the shelf right back to the actual herd that it came from. Because of that we have the safest product in the world as far as beef. We also have the best product in the world. Alberta alone, if it is looked at as an export nation, is the fifth largest exporter of beef in the world.
It is a phenomenal industry that must be protected, not only in Alberta but across Canada, because of its importance as an economic driver and a social driver, and as an engine that will sustain Canada in the long run. The government must take this very seriously.