Madam Speaker, to put into context my question for both the viewing audience and for the record, the adjournment proceedings tonight that I am participating in were sparked by a question I put to the government last year.
I said to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food that about all we had from the government on the live cattle ban was excuses on why the U.S. border would not open. I said that President Bush had come and gone and still the border remained closed. I then asked when the border would be opened.
I asked the question for a couple of reasons. I wanted to understand what the government's strategy or plan was on its foreign policy and agricultural policy, and particularly how the two were related. The debate on the BSE has gone on continuously. It has been roughly two years since the border closed. It seemed to me that the government had no plan and I wanted to try to understand, to grasp where it was coming from.
This is very important because the agriculture community of Canada is one of the vital, underlying, underpinning elements of our economy and, in particular, the cattle and beef industry ranges all across the country. It is important to almost every province, from British Columbia in the west, to the prairies and in my home province of Saskatchewan, to Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and even to the Atlantic provinces.
I put the question to the government to understand what proactive plan it had for the future, thinking ahead. This is interesting and important because we had seen the mad cow crisis as it had struck Europe and the lack of forethought the Europeans had. It was much greater than what we had. Brazil and various other countries had it but the government had no overlying foreign or agriculture policy proactively thought out ahead to see what and when we could do it as soon as it came.
We can see that the government had no effective plan because we see the results of it, literally two years to get the borders open on one case. It has now come to two or three different cases on the BSE, something so minor, so trivial that our borders should not have been shut down but it is something that we should have thought about.
I was curious and wanted to understand what the government was thinking on the agriculture policy but it also demonstrates our overall lack of a foreign policy. Agriculture, as with all trade departments, is involved in that too.
I was trying to grasp and understand what the Prime Minister and agriculture minister discussed with President Bush and to find out how we could use Canada's influence in the world. Unfortunately, we found out very clearly that Canada, with this government, has no influence in the world. Canada has no influence on agriculture policy in the United States unless we learn some of these lessons. The government apparently has not learned.
I will repeat my question to the government in more broad terms because the border is opening up. What is the proactive plan of the government on foreign policy, particularly as it relates to agriculture? What steps is it going to take to actually protect farmers from future disasters? We do not want just words. We want real actions.
