Mr. Speaker, I think where I left off in my speech was in regard to the all party delegation that should go to Washington to resolve the BSE issue in terms of opening up access for our beef cattle into the American market. In particular, it is in regard to live animals. That is where the pressure is these days.
This is vitally important to the people in my riding of Peace River. There have been many people who have diversified and switched over from cash crops and gone into the cattle sector. All of a sudden they find themselves on the wrong end of a border being closed which has the effect of depressing prices greatly.
In fact, I talked to someone shortly before I returned to Ottawa who shipped an animal and that individual received $88 for one cow. That is approximately 10% of what that animal was worth. It is like the Depression era where farmers would ship an animal and get a bill for freight. That would be their net loss in terms of income because there was no market there.
We have to remember that this is a very important issue for a lot of producers in the country. The request to have an all party delegation go to Washington was endorsed by the leader of the Canadian Alliance in question period. I think it is a good request. It means that more work must be done to put pressure on opening up that border for our products. We feel that this is a safe product. This has been clearly demonstrated. Canadian farmers rely on the government to make those kind of requests come true.
Before question period I was talking about the poor relationship that has developed as a result of an antagonistic Liberal party deliberately antagonizing the United States administration. It is not only the administration, but I would add the American people which is even worse.
We have the new Liberal leader who was basically all but elected on Saturday. He is on his grand tour, his royal tour across the country. He is out in Alberta and B.C. He is on his way to see the forest fires in British Columbia. He is about a month late though. Those fires have been put out by a lot of rain.
I can just imagine when he flies over Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba at about 35,000 feet, and he says, “Oh, that is really nice scenery down there. Look at all those nice cows”.
A lot of those cattlemen would like to see their cattle moved into markets in the United States which represents a $4.8 billion export a year. We need a little bit more from the soon to be Liberal Prime Minister than just platitudes. We need him to make some clear statements on what he intends to do about this serious problem.
When the new Liberal leader is out there looking for ways to solve the western alienation problem, I suggest he make a few stops along the way and talk to some real people out there. The cattlemen are concerned about the loss of income and how that border will be opened up.
I suggest the new Liberal leader should spend a sizeable amount of his time talking to Canadians. He should suggest some real solutions to a serious problem.