Mr. Speaker, this is unbelievable, really unbelievable. We have moved forward a concurrence motion on a report that comes from the agriculture committee and which very clearly talks about the need for action.
Members in three corners of the House have moved this concurrence motion forward because of the importance of the issue and the importance of action, but what we are seeing again, in an appallingly abusive way, is the Liberal government trying to shut down action on an issue that cost British Columbia, to take the farm gate receipts and the secondary economic impact, nearly $400 million, nearly half a billion dollars.
The agriculture committee held hearings in Abbotsford and came forward with a series of key recommendations, including the first recommendation, which resulted from an NDP amendment:
That an independent commission of inquiry be struck with the mandate to investigate the serious 2004 avian influenza outbreak in British Columbia.
Now the government is trying to shut this down, send the report back and delay things further on an issue that the agriculture committee has already flagged as a fundamental issue. This is absolutely unbelievable.
I suppose it is not surprising given all the other events of the last few weeks, the game playing around the budget implementation bill, and the appalling abuse of power that we saw on Monday night when the government House leader shut down opposition days, I guess because Liberals felt that the opposition was too effective a job in holding the government accountable for its actions and lack of actions in so many areas.
Now we see the government once again trying to shut down any sort of action or decisive impact to resolve issues that have an enormous impact on Canadians. It is absolutely unbelievable to me.
I should mention to what a great extent this shows disrespect for British Columbians. Because of the intervention of the member of Parliament for Abbotsford, we were fortunate to actually have two days of hearings on January 18 and 19 in Abbotsford on this important issue. What came back repeatedly from individuals in Abbotsford during those two days of public hearings was the importance of having a full public inquiry because the issue was not well handled. There were huge errors, which I will get into in a moment. Very clearly, there has been no proper investigation of what happened in that outbreak.
It is important to note that the CFIA report, which the government seems to feel is the final word on this issue, was done up even before the public hearings in Abbotsford, if members can believe that. The CFIA refused to take any public input whatsoever except from a very select group of people that it had hand-picked and who would not criticize the CFIA to any great extent. The CFIA produced its report and put it out to committee members and members of Parliament across the country on the day before the public hearings the agriculture committee was holding in Abbotsford.
In good faith, British Columbians came forward to give their best judgment of what happened, the mistakes that were made, the issues that were not dealt with and the problems with communication, all those issues that are fundamental in nature. As British Columbians came to give their testimony to the agriculture committee, the CFIA had already wrapped up its report and sent it out. It has not altered it since. There were no lessons learned from the public. There were no lessons learned from local experts. CFIA drew from its hand-picked list a series of recommendations that made it look not too bad and then put that out prior to the two days of public hearings.
Here is what we see now. Very clearly the agriculture committee has heard the comments of British Columbians in the Fraser Valley, the people who lived through this, the people who suffered through the mistakes that were made by the government and suffered through the lack of communication. The fact is that it took days for decisions to be made and they had to communicate with Ottawa to do anything. Those people came forward in good faith and said, “We need a public inquiry to really get to the root of these problems and to deal with it in such a way that this never happens again”.
We have seen what respect and what contempt the government has for British Columbians of good faith who came forward at those agriculture hearings and called for a public inquiry. Complete and utter contempt for British Columbians from every part of British Columbia. That is what we see from the government by this move right now.
It should not be surprising to us. We have already seen it with Air-India. We have seen it repeatedly when Parliament called for action on the dirty money scam, the ad scam, and paying back the money that was taken. The government has refused to implement the will of Parliament. We have seen it time and time and again. As a result of that, we are seeing Parliament's actions being thwarted by a government that does not understand the meaning of the word “democracy”.
We have an agriculture committee report. Members of Parliament moved this forward for concurrence, so we can get to the bottom of it, launch the public inquiry, find out what went wrong, prepare if, God forbid, there is another outbreak, and learn from the mistakes of the past. The government is trying to shut it down again. It is absolutely appalling. Words fail me. The level of contempt that the government has for Parliament, for Canadians, and in this case specifically for British Columbians, is beyond belief.
Let us talk a bit about the hearings. We know that the impact of the avian flu outbreak was huge. I am talking about lost farm gate receipts, the secondary economic impact of $400 million, and hundreds and hundreds of lost jobs. The region still has not fully recovered from that outbreak.
We had local experts and individuals who came and testified at the agriculture committee hearings in Abbotsford. They were able to give us some of the fundamental information that CFIA did not want to collect, or did not deign to collect. The information that CFIA did not want to hear was critical of decisions that were made.
However, this is the only way to learn from this outbreak. It had an enormous impact on the lower mainland of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. As a British Columbia MP I feel, as my colleagues do in three corners of the House, that we must deal with it, correct the mistakes that were made, and move on in as rapid, thorough and effective way as possible. We see the government trying to one more time block any progress on this. If there is another outbreak in a few months or a year, we will not have the measures in place because there has never been a thorough examination that needs to take place.
Let us talk about what happened. I am going to cite the producers' account of the euthanasia and depopulation procedures at the first and second farms diagnosed with avian influenza in British Columbia in 2004. Four people, distinguished individuals, including the only two avian veterinarians in British Columbia, co-wrote this report. I am talking about Dr. Stewart Ritchie and Dr. Victoria Bowes. They went into detail about what happened around the time of the first and second outbreak.
I am going to quote a few passages for the record from this important report and I should mention this is a report that CFIA has never read because its officials did not want to. The CFIA had hand-picked experts produce a report and threw it out before the public hearings in British Columbia to the immense disrespect of British Columbians. Since then the report has not been changed at all. In fact, the experts that were consulted were all outside British Columbia and were all outside Canada. The report was sent to Europe and Hong Kong. The CFIA did not want to actually have anyone who knew anything about the crisis outbreak and the mistakes that were made actually reading the analysis.
The experts note:
On February 7, 2004, the owner of a modern broiler breeder farm in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada noticed that his 51 week old flock of 9,000 broiler breeder chickens (Flock A) took double the normal time to consume the allotted amount of feed, as well as noted there was a slight increase in mortality.
On the first day of increased mortality samples of dead birds from Flock B were submitted for further investigation to the BCMAFF-AHC...On February 18, 2004 the CFIA declared that the Federal Government was in control of this outbreak, the farm was placed under quarantine and provisions were made for the pre-emptive euthanasia and depopulation ofthe two flocks.
Let us talk a bit about the euthanasia procedures that were taking place on February 9, 2004. Approximately 3,500 kilograms of chicken carcasses were ground up, after they were euthanized, together with 1,000 kilograms of barn litter per load. Each of those 15 mixed loads were transported approximately 400 metres along a public road, that also went over a small stream, to the owner's residential driveway where the contents of the portable mixer were dumped directly onto the paved driveway. This material was then pushed with a tractor front-end loader into an open dairy feed bunker for the purpose of composting.
The owner of the first farm affected and the attending CFIA veterinarian both commented at the time that this was taking place in the open, and that there were strong winds originating from the north. The filling of the bunker proceeded throughout the night and at 5 a.m. on February 22, the bunker was only able to contain the equivalent of 10,000 birds and it reached full capacity at 60% of what was needed to be disposed of. Since local disposal options were limited, the remaining infectious material was placed in plastic lined cardboard totes using the front-end loader. They were then transported to an incineration site in Princeton, B.C., which is over the mountains through the Manning Park area.
On February 23, 2004, the day after depopulation was completed, the CFIA lifted the quarantine at this farm despite the presence of a large quantity of composting, infected carcasses. In the CFIA report, we do not hear mention of this because the CFIA report had already come out prior to this information actually being released.
We had composting, infected carcasses. The quarantine was lifted. Surprise, surprise. On March 6, 2004, a full 14 days following the depopulation activity on the index farm, a second broiler breeder farm located 1.5 kilometres southwest of the original farm was diagnosed with the avian influenza. Which way were the winds blowing? They were from the north and from the original farm.
It was not a surprise at all. The quarantine had been shut down. They were composting carcasses all around with this highly infectious avian flu virus and what happened? To the surprise of nobody, particularly the experts who were in the field, 14 days later we had a second outbreak.
The depopulation of this farm did not happen until March 13, 2004 because CFIA required that all diagnostic tests be confirmed at the national foreign animal disease laboratory in Winnipeg. During the interim seven days, while waiting for official confirmation, the mortality in the affected barns on the second farm reached over 95%.
We went through a second euthanasia procedure. Dr. Victoria Bowes and Dr. Stewart Ritchie, the two avian veterinarians and experts were not consulted or involved in any way with CFIA's whitewash of the activities that took place in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, but they state that the reasons are unclear why carbon dioxide gas was not chosen as the method of euthanasia. Instead, a mobile electric stunning machine developed for the euthanasia of spent commercial egg-laying hens was employed.
Birds were fed through an electrically charged chute for the killing process and the carcasses were then openly conveyed along a belt to be dropped into the top of reefer trucks. This procedure, which is no surprise to any of us, and which took place over three days, resulted in the dispensing of large quantities of infectious dust and feathers high into the air, as feathers and dust were noted to have travelled a significant distance and to have covered vehicles that were parked nearby.
In the case of the second farm, as in the case of the first farm, the producer questioned the wisdom of this method of disposal during strong winds. Anyone would understand that this method of disposal in strong winds was inappropriate, but the process continued until completion. We would not see that either in the CFIA whitewash. That is why we need a public inquiry.
I hope that members of the government who are present here today are ashamed, having learned some of the details rather than referring to their talking points. I hope they understand how crucial this issue is to British Columbians and how crucial this is for the agricultural sector all across the country.
On the second farm and seven days later, a third cluster of commercial poultry farms located downwind, within two kilometres of the first two farms, were diagnosed with avian flu. This came as no surprise to anybody in the House and no one who was at the agricultural committee hearings in Abbotsford on March 22, 2004.
On April 1, 2004 it was diagnosed outside of the original high risk zone, which was defined as a five kilometre radius zone around the flock where avian flu was first diagnosed. Over the next eight weeks a total of 42 commercial poultry farms in the Abbotsford area were identified as being positive.
This information is not in the CFIA whitewash. This information has not gone to the government. For the government to obstruct the work of the agriculture committee and to block what British Columbians of good faith have brought forward for us to take action on is absolutely despicable. There is no excuse for this action.
As information comes out from three corners of the House, I hope members of the government will understand how despicable these actions were. This series of convoluted amendments are trying to whitewash the report or drown the report. The government is trying to cover up a series of mistakes that were made in the first quarantine zone and in the second quarantine zone, and led to an outbreak that cost almost $500 million to British Columbians and hundreds of jobs. For the government to whitewash this affair is absolutely appalling and inappropriate.
We have the evidence. We had two days of hearings, January 18 and January 19, 2005, which clearly indicated the absolute need for a public hearing. Many witnesses came forward who indicated that we needed to learn from this crisis without any doubt. This almost became a catastrophe. We need to have a full public inquiry. We need to consult with the experts who have been left aside by the whitewashing of CFIA. We need to get to the bottom of this.
We are not talking about something of little importance. We are talking about something that has had a profound effect on the agriculture community in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. We are talking about an issue that has the potential to decimate other parts of the country as well. A clear majority on the agriculture committee indicated a public inquiry was vitally important in order to fully get to the bottom of every aspect of the crisis last year and to prevent the reoccurrence of outbreaks.
One of the things that we called for, and the first recommendation that the agriculture committee called for, in order to prevent the reoccurrence of any outbreaks was for the commission to review the effectiveness of the emergency preparedness and implementation strategies that were deployed in British Columbia regarding zoonotic diseases.
No one in the House doubts that this is a priority. No one in the House doubts that the government needs to take action. Members of the opposition have brought forward this motion for concurrence and it would be a shameful moment indeed if members of the government tried to block the will of British Columbians and the will of our agricultural sector.