Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate. This issue affects a lot of producers, basic products in Canada that make a big contribution to our financial well-being, particularly in the rural areas but it certainly does not stop there.
The motion today is to send a delegation to Washington to try to get the border opened up. I take it in the spirit in which it was developed. I think it is a good idea. I see some difficulties with it in terms of how that might play out but I will deal with that in a moment.
As the trade critic for our party, I realize that overall we have an excellent relationship with the United States. It is a big customer for a lot of our products. In fact, there is trade of about $2 billion a day that crosses the Canada-U.S. border both ways. Most of that trade happens without any incident or difficulties at all but there have been some longstanding disputes. Steel is one of them. Softwood lumber is another that has been going on for 25 to 30 years. Of course now there is the BSE incident that occurred. My colleague from Lethbridge talked of the matter of one cow being found to have BSE, or mad cow disease, which interrupted trade between Canada and the United States. That is a very big market.
The cattle industry is one of those integrated industries that has allowed product to flow freely between Canada and the United States for some time.
My riding of Peace River is in northwestern Alberta. Animals from the United States have come up to be on grass or pasture there. We know that animals from the United States have come up into our feedlots, into southern Alberta and vice versa. Cattle from Canada have gone down to feedlots in the United States. This has been an integrated industry, as it should be. Both countries have benefited a great deal from having that industry integrated as it was.
It shows how vulnerable we are when an incident of one animal upsets a tremendous market. It represents exports to the United States alone in the beef industry of $4.5 billion per year. We export about 80% of what we produce. There are 15 million cattle in Canada. It is a big industry. Exports amount to 80% and 60% of that goes to the United States so it is a big market for our product. However, we only make up about 5% of what the United States needs so it is not as big a matter for the Americans, but it represents a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of Canadians. I know many people personally in my riding who have diversified and gone into the cattle business. It has been a good industry for them.
The goal is to get the border open to live animals as it has been in the past. We have to keep this matter in perspective. Yes, we had one incident in the past about 10 years ago with an animal that developed BSE. That animal was imported from Britain. Now another one has been found, one animal out of 15 million animals. There may be more but that is all that has been found at the moment and there is extensive screening going on.
Let us please keep this matter in perspective. There are 15 million animals with one animal affected by it. It has turned our border into a fortress with the United States, a market that we need very badly.
What is the answer? Today's opposition motion suggests that a high level delegation go to Washington to try to reopen the border. I think it is a good proposal but one which we have tried before. In fact, in the summer the leader of our party went to Washington with a number of our trade people to try to do just that. We need to continue to work on it. We need to ask the Americans what criteria need to be satisfied for the border to be opened.
We asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food on a number of occasions in the House that very question. He either cannot or will not answer the question. I am not sure why.
Surely countries that have that kind of close relationship in trade, as there is with Canada and Mexico, and we have NAFTA, should be able to get to the point very quickly. What exactly is keeping that border closed to our product? To date he has not done that.
Let me just take a moment to deal with the prospect of the Prime Minister leading a high level delegation because that is a problem right at the start. It is part of the reason the border has not been open before now. It goes beyond the Prime Minister.
Many members of the Liberal Party sitting opposite have spent the last year or so insulting our American neighbours, not just the administration. There have been references to the administration and to the President. It seems to me the Liberals have gone beyond that. They are insulting the American people. It is a finger in the eye of the American public.
Then we wonder why it is so difficult for us to get the border open when insults have been hurled from the Liberal Party across the way at our very best customers. It does not make any sense at all. Until this current administration is out of here, we will not see any success in getting the border open, so the sooner it moves on the better.