Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask for an emergency debate on what is called PEDv, or porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, which has affected the pork industry. It is now in four provinces across our country: Manitoba; Ontario; Quebec, as of yesterday; and Prince Edward Island.
It is a disease new to our country. It broke out in the United States last year for the first time. It is not an unknown virus across the world, but it is new to North America.
It is an insidious virus that does not affect human health and does not affect the food supply chain per se, but it can indeed destroy the entire pork industry in our country by basically killing off young piglets. When they contract that virus, as the title says, they literally dehydrate to death. The mortality rate is beyond 80%.
The pork industry itself says if this were to take a foothold and go through the barns of our pork producers in the country, we are looking at estimated losses of around $45 million. Those would be catastrophic losses for them.
What is also important about this crisis is that the virus knows no boundary. It has affected the upper states of Montana and Wyoming, where it can go across the border into Alberta or into other provinces from those particular states. Pig farmers across the country are facing a huge dilemma. Just at a time when their industry had recovered for the last year and a half after a severe downturn, they are now faced with this catastrophic illness that is going through the industry.
That is why I ask today that we contemplate having an emergency debate to see what we can do federally, because at the moment it is being shunted and punted back to the provinces as a provincial issue. Clearly it has transformed across the borders and it is no longer just a provincial problem. It truly is a problem for the pork industry across the country. I ask that you entertain an emergency debate on that subject, Mr. Speaker.