Mr. Chair, a lot of people have dates in their minds that are important to them. It might be a birthday, an anniversary or the remembrance of some momentous occasion. I would suggest that for years to come the date of May 20, 2003, is going to be indelibly planted in the minds of farm families and families who have had to go out of agriculture because of what happened on that date: one cow being diagnosed with BSE.
One cow on May 20 and the market doors slammed shut and have not been fully reopened. That will be a date that agriculture people are going to remember for years and years to come. Every region of the country has been hit. In virtually every province there are people who have been affected. In my constituency of Okanagan--Coquihalla are some of the largest ranches in North America. As a matter of fact, the largest ranch in North America is in my constituency in the Douglas Lake area.
I sympathize when we read reports, as we have over the years, about when certain regions are hit with a calamity of some kind and 200 or 400 jobs are lost. Oftentimes there is an immediate response from the government. It falls over itself rushing to fix the problem.
This particular problem, estimated now at $6 billion in losses to the rural communities, with over 4,000 jobs lost, this, in any other estimation in any other industry, would be a national disaster. One would think the government would be galvanized on this, but it has not been.
There was a false promise made during the election that the government would have this thing wrapped up by the end of the summer. It simply has not happened and the government is literally getting away with it.
The irony for those involved, especially in the cattle industry, is that for decades they have been resilient. They have not needed well intended and appropriate farm programs. They have gone through the highs and the lows and the cycle of the commodity markets and the feed markets and other things that constantly assail this particular industry. They have gone through those times and they have toughed it out largely on their own without government programs. Now when they get hit with disaster, where is the government? It is not there for them.
My colleagues have very clearly articulated in specific forms some of the things that could and should be done to relieve these people who are being hit by this disaster. It basically comes down to getting the help to the farm gate, but what do we hear about? We hear about forms that are so complex that farmers cannot fill them out, about farmers having to hire accountants to try to catalogue the disaster they are going through, and about a government that makes idle promises and programs that are falling far short of what needs to be done to literally save the agriculture industry in our country.
One aspect that needs to be addressed, which my colleagues have mentioned, is this whole aspect of international and foreign relations. Relationships between countries are simply that; they are simply relationships between people. This government and this Prime Minister have allowed some of the worst poisoning of the well of international relations that we have seen in modern history. Literally, MPs have been allowed to hurl the most grotesque insults across the border to a country whose men and women are battling on foreign fields.
That affects the negotiations.
Yes, this must be science based, and yes, it must be agriculturally based, but these types of problems can be resolved if there is goodwill between the two people. The goodwill has been diminished because of this cavalier attitude that the Prime Minister has allowed to exist. He has MPs who are probably suffering from political Tourette's syndrome with the type of language that they fire across the border in a haphazard way.
One has to think about what happens, then, in the discussion rooms in the administration south of the border when those people who are involved in the industry south of the border are sitting down and looking at this problem. They simply remind their president and their secretary of trade, “These are the people who insult us all the time. These are the people who hammer us when our boys and girls, our sons and daughters, are on foreign fields”. They are able to use the delinquency of this government as a lever to apply pressures that they should not be able to apply. These borders should be open.
The questions I have are these. Number one, why is the Prime Minister in Russia, France and Hungary? I appreciate very much the fact, as we all do, that he took time out to pay his respects to a sailor. But he needs to pay respect to the farm families that are going down in the country. I appreciate the people of Hungary and the government there, but I am not sure what is more important in Hungary than his being here and putting all his efforts into solving this crisis.
I would also like to ask, as my colleagues have asked, why not have the programs in place now? What is in place right now should this disaster strike again? We hope it never does, but is there something in place in terms of emergency preparedness so that we would not have to see this whole ugly movie unfold again?
When are we going to see the right programs? Why is the Prime Minister touring the world when he should be having his focus on this problem? And should this ever happen again--we hope and pray it never will--what has the government learned and what does it have in place to deal with the problem in the future? Help the farmers now and what do we have to protect us in the future?