Mr. Speaker, Canadian farmers are not stupid. Earlier on there were comments from the New Democrats, who of course are opposed to free trade. They suggested that the appropriate response was to start slamming shut the border to goodness knows what, but certainly to American product.
I have a petition with several thousand signatures of people from eastern Ontario. Some of them are farmers and some are not. It calls upon Parliament, and I will read from the petition, “Your petitioners request that Parliament instruct the Minister of International Trade to renegotiate Canada's international trade treaties to ensure that Canadian beef and other Canadian agricultural exports can never again be excluded from foreign markets after their safety has been demonstrated”.
That is the point. The problem we currently have with international trade treaties is that they are designed in part to ensure the rapid shutdown of borders, without countervailing sanctions, when there is legitimate or the perception of a threat to health. However, they do not call for the mandatory reopening of borders, either piecemeal or all at once, when it is demonstrated that the risk does not exist.
Our government has taken advantage of this in the past to hide its own protectionist actions. Now we are reaping the whirlwind which we have sowed. It is not just the Americans that are looking at us. All our trade partners are. They see one rule that applies when it comes to our exports and another rule that applies to our imports, and they are not impressed. Not only do the Americans feel that way, all our trade partners feel that way. We have to be a bit respectful of our trade partners.
With regard to the United States, we cannot play hardball on this kind of thing and think we will come out winning. Remember Pierre Trudeau's famous observation that, “Being beside the Americans is like sleeping beside an elephant”. We should not get in fist fight with elephants. The reality is the United States is able to withstand trade wars because it is a country which is not really dependent on international trade, much more than any of its trade partners, especially us. If we get into a fist fight with them, we will come out the losers. This is not the way to help our farmers.
In the long term I would suggest the way to help our farmers is to work as the petitioners suggest, by causing those treaties to be changed. It will not solve this crisis this year or next year. It will prevent this kind of crisis from occurring in the future, whether for beef or any other sector of our agriculture.