Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my friend from Battlefords--Lloydminster on his speech. He knows a tremendous amount about this issue. He gave a great speech and provided a very good critique of where the government has gone wrong on this issue.
I want to start by acknowledging our support for this motion. The motion essentially says that a trade delegation should be put together, headed by the Prime Minister, an all party delegation that would go to the U.S. to work on people, both in the administration and in Congress, to convince them to get the border completely open to Canadian beef and cattle. Of course the situation today is that the market is partially open to beef, but there are no live cattle moving across the border yet with the exception of veal. At any rate, suffice it to say that much has to be done.
I want to start by saying that what concerns me, and this criticism has already been raised, is that the government started out correctly. I think the CFIA did a very good job initially. It kept everyone in the loop. We knew what was going on when it was doing the trace-out; it provided us with a lot of information. But once it got to the point where that had been completed, suddenly the information loop was shut down and we were left out of the loop. If there was a strategy, it was not a very clear strategy. We did not understand what was going on. Certainly there were no daily briefings like those we had initially from the minister. All of that sort of went by the boards.
But I can tell the House that the crisis did not go away. In my riding in southern Alberta, we have a major packing plant that employs 2,500 people, Lakeside Packers, in the town of Brooks, Alberta, which has a population of 12,000. These people come from all over Canada and from all over the world, frankly, to work at this place. When we were first hit by this, I can tell members that it was touch and go for Lakeside. It lost a lot of employees. A lot of people had to look for work elsewhere. Some people gave up their homes. Even though it was only a short period of time during which Lakeside was not employing people, some people had to give up their homes. They were living hand to mouth. It was a very difficult time.
Meanwhile we had people affected who are in the trucking industry. They are still affected by this today. People have lost their trucks because they depended on Lakeside and on having a market to haul cattle to feedlots, to haul cattle into the U.S., or to haul boxed beef into the U.S. We have lost that and many of those people who have lost their trucks are completely out of it; effectively they have gone bankrupt.
We have feedlots that are hanging by a cusp even today. There are some more positive signs out there, but we have such a long way to go. Some of them have gone under. More will go under. It is a very serious situation.
Finally we have the cow-calf operators, the ranchers. They are in very serious trouble right now. Many of them are very worried about their calf crop this fall and what is going to happen. Are they going to be able to get rid of their calves? It is the one time in the year when they make money. If they are not able to get rid of their calves, they will have to overwinter them. They will have to buy feed for them and all that kind of thing. These are very difficult situations.
I want to say that 100,000 Canadians have their livelihoods directly affected by this as ranchers and then there are another 100,000 who are indirectly affected because they provide support. There are many others I have not even mentioned who are affected by this.
What concerns me is that the government does not seem to have a coherent strategy. I have been very disappointed by the lack of effort at the highest levels of government in getting the border open. If there is something happening, it is not apparent to me. We have seen a couple of ministers go down to the United States, the agriculture minister and the natural resources minister, but what about the highest levels of government?
The Prime Minister of Canada has an obligation to deal with this issue seriously. He may not get out to Alberta all that often, but I remind him that he is still the Prime Minister of all of Canada, not just of the parts he likes to go to. He has not done the job when it comes to protecting the interests of people in rural Canada in general and in western Canada in particular. I can tell members that people are very disappointed.
If the Prime Minister wants a legacy, he has one, but it is not one that I think he would really want in the long run. His legacy will be that he did not stand up for the cattle industry when he had the chance to. Where was he when all of this broke? All we saw of him was that he ate a steak out on the street in the market here in Ottawa. That is fine, but that has to be followed up by action.
In fact, instead of being helpful, in many cases he was very unhelpful. He could not help himself; he had to continue to slur and slight our American colleagues at a time when we were trying to settle an important trade dispute, one of many trade disputes, by the way. He has affected them all.
The Prime Minister could not help himself. He had to continue to slander the Americans at every point. Even yesterday he could not stop himself. He had to rebuke the Americans.
I do not want to get off on a tangent on this, but I have to say that sometimes the Americans deserve rebuking. I am not arguing that, but it will carry a lot more weight if they also are given credit when they deserve credit. That never happens from this Prime Minister.
When the Americans are pouring $10 billion or $15 billion into Africa to help with the AIDS problem there and twisting the arms of pharmaceutical companies to get drug costs down to help people with AIDS in Africa, do we hear the Prime Minister stand up and say, “I congratulate the Americans for doing that”. No. He is silent when it comes to offering praise, but he is down their throats every time he does not like what the Americans are doing. Frankly, I think it is a black mark on his already sorry record. His actions will not be forgotten by all those people who have been hurt by them, including many people in rural Canada and certainly in western Canada.
I say that as a cautionary note to my Conservative friends, who want the Prime Minister to lead this delegation. I would suggest that maybe someone who is a little less damaged might be the person who could lead this delegation to the United States.
This summer I went to the United States with my leader and the member for Lethbridge and the member for Fraser Valley. We met with Congress and we met with the senior agricultural adviser to the president. I think that is how it has to be done. We have to go to the United States and cultivate relationships. We cannot slam people when we do not like what is going on down there and expect to have them show any favour to us or give us any benefit of the doubt when we run into a trade problem like the one we have.
I think the people who deserve some of the most credit are those in the industry themselves. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association has gone to the United States and worked with its colleagues there, to the point where the National Cattlemen's Beef Association in the United States is recommending to its government that it open the border to live cattle exports into the United States from Canada. It is outstanding work that they have done.
I think about my own riding and the mayor of the little town I live in. Don Weisbeck went to Montana and talked to his colleagues down there to try to help them understand what was going on and how we depend on one another. The reeve of my county, Wayne Daniels, helped in pushing for a big rally at the U.S. border to draw attention to this, and on the American side too, and to point out that we need to work together.
There have been many examples like these where people have shown tremendous initiative on their own and it is helpful. Eventually these are all straws the break the camel's back and eventually we will get the exports of live cattle going back into the United States again. That is the goal, but let me say that it will not be done if we are constantly sticking our finger in the U.S. administration's eye and that is something that this government never misses an opportunity to do.
I know my time has come to an end, but I again want to emphasize how important this issue is and how disappointed I am that the highest levels of the government have not addressed this issue as seriously as they could and should. I do not understand what is happening with the prime minister in waiting, who spent his summer eating hamburgers on the barbecue circuit when he could have been working toward influencing the Americans on this issue. He still has said virtually nothing on this issue, which is very disappointing.
Suffice it to say that the government has a lot of work to do in order to win the support of ranchers across the country and certainly of the official opposition.