Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address a situation I asked a question about in the House much earlier this year. It is about the bovine TB that is occurring in southeastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan.
This very serious situation has created unending stress and harm in the cattle industry. These are generational families on generational ranches that have raised some of the best beef in the world, generational herds. These are not herds that have just popped up, but have been there hereditarily and were developed decade after decade.
When one animal is identified with bovine TB, immediately CFIA becomes involved, as its goal is to keep Canada TB free so we have that reputation in the international market of trading the best beef in the world. However, we have large ranches with community pastures and many animals from many different ranches use them. When 18 different family businesses became quarantined, this meant a lot of stress on their neighbours as testing would have to occur. As the testing occurred, there were reactors, which meant there were orders for slaughtering.
Over the last three months, these families were stressed as they no longer had an asset they could take to market. These products are not like others. These are live animals. These are generational herds that are produced to sell, but the families could not sell them and they could not do anything with them other than wait for a slaughter order. They had to maintain the herds, feed them and they had to take care of what would be slaughtered. The stress was incredible. It was a part of the founding industry, beef ranching industry in that part of the world.
Eventually thousands of bulls, cows and calves were slaughtered. It left these family businesses in a very rough place.
CFIA had limited resources on the ground to work with this, not realizing the size of this catastrophe for these families. Over time, more staff was allocated to work with the testing. Thousands of animals had to be tested. As they worked through this, local ranchers developed better relationships with these people, but there were problems as these animals were destroyed and because of an arranged payment. However, there is only a one-year tax deferral, and these herds cannot be replaced. We cannot go to Walmart and get a new herd.
The families need five years of tax deferrals to start the process of rebuilding herds with the kind of quality for which they have the reputation. As we rebuild this industry in this part of our country and as we rebuild the best beef in the world, we need a simple change. It is not a change of legislation. A simple change can be made because the supplementary program to support these was a unique one put in place for this. The Finance Department can make a simple change so these farms will survive and get back in the business in a productive manner.