Madam Speaker, last month I rose in the House to ask a very important question on the subject of cross-border trade with the United States. More particularly, I asked about the effects that a possible requirement for 24 hour notice before crossing the border would have on such sectors as the auto sector. The answer that I received from the minister was unsatisfactory and so here I am this evening, in search of a more thoughtful response.
Given recent events in our country's agricultural sector, I would like to shift my focus slightly to another even more troubling new barrier to trade and to examine the effects that the closing of the Canada-U.S. border to Canadian beef as a result of the BSE scare are starting to have on this important industry.
We all understand the ripple effects that occur when unanticipated trade restraints are imposed on important export industries. If the borders with the United States, our most important trading partner, are to be closed to Canadian beef, this will have widespread implications throughout our economy. And contrary to what the urban focused Liberal government might think, this is not a problem that will affect only the rural west.
Although it is true that Canada's one and only confirmed case of BSE took place in Alberta, beef farming is a crucial part of the rural economy right here in eastern Ontario. In the rural parts of the amalgamated city of Ottawa, beef farms are the most numerous type of farm enterprise. In Ottawa, nearly 600 businesses serve these operations, thereby creating over 3,500 jobs. Similarly, in Lanark and Renfrew counties, nearly 9% of all jobs are tied to the agriculture sector and over $240 million is generated every year by businesses that buy from and sell to farms. In the Ottawa Valley, even more than in Ottawa itself, beef farms greatly outnumber any other type of farm. Therefore, the effects of a prolonged closure of the U.S. border to Canadian beef could be particularly devastating to rural eastern Ontario.
It is not just farmers who are being hurt. It is the truck drivers who would have taken cattle to market. It is the people who find their employment at the local sale barn, where sales volumes are down dramatically. It is all the people in the agricultural support industries to whom the government is showing spectacular insensitivity.
Eastern Ontario is a part of the country in which the government has repeatedly failed to provide adequate staffing and services at its employment insurance offices. The result is that it is constantly missing its service targets in terms of waiting periods for temporarily unemployed workers who need access, often for the very first time in their lives, to the employment insurance system to which they have faithfully contributed for years.
Now the government seems intent on refusing to accept reduced waiting periods for workers who have been temporarily deprived of employment due to the closing of the border to beef.
This seems astonishing to me given that we saw the government spring to attention and take rapid action to provide temporary special relief under the employment insurance system to Torontonians who lost their jobs as the result of the SARS outbreak. Yet it has been completely unwilling to show similar concern for the job impact that BSE is starting to have in rural parts of the very same province.
Let me stress again, as strongly as I can, the point that BSE can destroy jobs in rural Ontario every bit as much as SARS has hurt jobs in Toronto. A job which is lost due to the spin-out from BSE is every bit as much a job which is lost due to the spin-out from SARS.
Therefore, my question is: when will the government stop being less generous to rural Canadians than it has been to Torontonians?