Madam Speaker, I wish to be the first to rise on this motion today, to speak in a very important debate about agriculture in Canada and Quebec, which has been hard hit by the mad cow crisis.
This crisis has occurred because of the decisions made by a finance minister who has now become Prime Minister. Few countries have abandoned the agricultural sector as much as Canada in the last 10 years, This situation is unhealthy because in a period of crisis such as the one we are now experiencing, this is the time when producers need help from the Canadian government.
According to figures from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the federal government has cut its agricultural spending in half over the past 10 years. Ottawa's intervention in this crisis consists in establishing pan-Canadian measures that do not meet the specific needs of farmers in Quebec. The source of this problem is the American decision to ban Canadian and Quebec beef from the U.S. because there was one mad cow in Alberta.
Nearly a year ago, when the current Prime Minister was beginning his job, we were told that progress would be made, the problem would be solved, and relations would improve. President Bush has just left Canada. Little was said about either softwood lumber or mad cow. President Bush said quite a lot more about the missile defence shield. But in terms of progress, nothing was done.
For 18 months we have heard that the solution was coming. It is getting closer. Those who keep repeating that make me think of people who say they can see the light at the end of the tunnel but do not realize that it is from an oncoming train.
I would like to talk now about health practices in Canada. It should be obvious that the situation is much better in Quebec than elsewhere. I mentioned the mad cow found in Alberta, 5,000 kilometres away from Quebec. There is a lot more livestock traded between Alberta and North Dakota, Idaho and Montana than with Quebec. However Quebec is being penalized.
During the avian flu outbreak in New Castle, Canada banned the importation of poultry from four states, not from every state in the U.S. In his wisdom, the agriculture minister at the time realized that a Los Angeles rooster had nothing to do with a New York City hen. We could have asked the U.S. to take the same approach with regard to Quebec beef and cull cows.
I asked the agriculture minister at the time why the issue was not being dealt with on a region by region basis. He answered that Canadians should have the same standards from one end of the country to the other, whether that worked or not. When you turn mad cow into a symbol of national unity, something is wrong. It is irresponsible.
As I was saying Quebec's regulations are much better than elsewhere. We have a well established traceability system. We can therefore follow the animal from birth to sale. Quebec banned ruminant meal four years before it was done elsewhere. I remember the scrapie outbreak. Quebec had already taken action.
I personally met people all across Quebec who suffered the consequences of Ottawa's inertia during the scrapie outbreak and now it is the same story all over again with cull cows and the beef industry.
If Quebec were a sovereign country, it would not have this problem. I heard the Prime Minister say “The North American market is integrated. The same conditions prevail throughout North America”.
A crash course in geography might have helped refresh the Prime Minister's memory, because Mexico is part of North America and NAFTA. And Mexico is not affected because it is a sovereign country, even if it is physically closer to Alberta than Alberta is to Quebec.
Let us examine markets where the economies are much more integrated, such as the European Union. When England had to face several cases of mad cow disease, Germany was not affected. When mad cow disease was found in France, even Italy, a border country, was not affected. They were not affected because they are sovereign countries. We would not have been affected if we had not been part of Canada. At the very least, we could have regionalized.
Allow me to quote Laurent Pellerin, chairman of the UPA:
If the provinces were separate and had distinct inspection systems and regionalized product marketing mechanisms, only one province would be facing this crisis today.
We would then have a lot more resources available to help Alberta, because beef producers in that province also need assistance. They too suffer because of this crisis. However, using all available federal resources to give better help to Alberta, and leaving the rest of Canada alone, would have been a logical solution.
The president of Maple Leaf Foods, Michael McCain, who is not a sovereignist—but this does not stop him, unlike others, from thinking for himself—recently said that he supported dividing Canada into different zones, from an animal health point of view. This is feasible to the extent that there is a political will and enough intelligence and realism to ensure that we have in place programs geared to the needs of the different realities across Canada and Quebec.
This is why we are saying that it is absolutely necessary to decentralize certain components of the food inspection system. If there had been such decentralization, Quebec producers would not have been affected.
I see that some members opposite are smiling. They think it is very funny. But they are too scared to attend the UPA congress. They are smiling, but they are too cowardly to go and talk to the farmers who are waiting for them in Quebec City this morning. These are cowardly acts, no more and no less.