Mr. Chair, I have listened to a fair amount of the debate this evening. A couple of comments have stood out among all the comments that have been made.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food stated that the objective of the government was to keep far farmers in business. I certainly applaud the parliamentary secretary's comments and I think he actually believes them. However, I live in rural Nova Scotia. I can drive by farm after farm that is no longer in production. They have given up. They have moved on to another means of making a livelihood. They have abandoned their farms.
Over the weekend I was at home putting the finishing touches on a new barn. One might ask why I would build a new barn today, and I ask myself that question. A friend of mine came by because he pastures his heifers there. I know the parliamentary secretary is no stranger to the barnyard. He said that he was fifth generation farmer and he saw no way that he could stay in the industry. He is an engineer and he has always supported his farm by off farm income. He will no longer stay in the beef industry.
Our farms in Nova Scotia are much smaller and more modest in scale than they are in western Canada. It does not matter if a farmer has 50 head of cattle, of 100 head of cattle or 200 head of cattle, they are just as important as the farm that has 1,000 or 10,000. The same element of scale is involved.
We have a situation that has arisen in the country that is hitting agriculture like no other situation with which we have ever had to deal. I do not see any answers coming from the government. I have heard a lot of discussion, a lot of rhetoric and a lot of debate tonight that somehow miraculously the border will open. Quite frankly, I would like to see how and why.
We have done nothing in our association with our American allies and colleagues to open the border. The government has been adversarial, in most degrees, when dealing with the Americans. There is nothing that would tell us, looking at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Health Canada regulations and the USDA regulations, that the border will open. If the Americans want to keep it closed, they will keep it closed and they will keep it closed for the mandatory seven years. There are 30 other countries of the world that have also closed their borders to Canadian beef.
This is not a situation. This is a crisis.There are 16.8 million cattle in Canada. We have nearly one million head of sheep. We have elk, goats and deer. All these animals need to be marketed. We have cull cows coming from the dairy industry. We have dairy heifers that we cannot ship across the border. This is just compounding exponentially every day as this situation goes on.
We cannot sit here and talk about what might happen when the border opens. I want to know what we have done. I have heard the discussion about what we have done about Japan. Between Japan and Korea, a million tonnes of beef is consumed in those two countries alone.
What has the government done to look at a mandatory testing regime for overseas exports, which the government would pay, not the farmers? What about the $8 billion in surplus that the government suddenly miraculously found on its books? How much of that will get to the farm gate? I suspect very little, if any. The idea that somehow we might find $400 million on September 10 to put into a program that might be delved out over the next six months, to a year, to eighteen months is great. That is wonderful for the person who is grasping at straws. A lot of farmers have already given up and have drowned.
What are we going to do to ensure that at least the rudiments of the industry, the basis of our industry, is still there two years down the road when we are still having this discussion about the American border not being open and when we still have done nothing about accessing the huge Asian market and other markets around the world?