Bob Speller

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see that the opposition party is moving away from the non-partisanship of this debate. It was not me who said no. I would be more than happy to stay here and answer any of the members' questions.

If the hon. member wants to go through the right process and talk to the right people, which is the people in the House, to discuss how we might want to do this, I would be more than pleased. I have hon. members who want to stand up and debate this. They want to make a point. If we run out of time at the end, because I have given it to the hon. member, then they cannot do that.

Therefore, I would hope that hon. members would recognize that there are ways of doing that and that they would go through the right process to do it.

If we want to talk about the democratic deficit, we can talk about where we are moving on this. I would be more than happy to talk to the hon. members as to what we are doing on this. What I will tell the hon. members is what I have told all Canadians. What we plan to do and what we will continue to do is push foreign governments to open the borders. That is what Canadian farmers have told me that we need to do. We will continue to do that.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I want to thank all hon. members in the House tonight for coming out for this very important debate. I particularly want to thank the member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex and the member for Huron—Bruce who suggested this, as well as members from all parties who had asked that we have this debate.

This is an issue that the hon. member may not understand, but it is an issue that crosses party lines and it is an issue that is of concern to all Canadians. The Government of Canada, as I have said before and I will continue to say, takes this issue very seriously because it is one that I believe all Canadians, whether a farmer or not, believe is of utmost importance to the country.

I want to once again thank the Prime Minister for the work he has done on this in terms of his work with both President Bush and President Fox and for his encouragement and support for the work that ministers have had on this side in terms of trying to get the borders open.

The BSE situation has repercussions right across the country, not only for farmers and farm families or just beef or dairy. In fact representatives of the Dairy Farmers of Canada are in town this week. They represent the dairy producers across this country who have been impacted by this very much. I want to recognize the work that the leadership of the Dairy Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and all farm groups have done on this. They have taken this issue very seriously and I believe have given us here in the House the support that we need to help move this issue forward.

I want to report on BSE and what the Government of Canada has done since our first case of BSE on May 21, 2003. As everyone knows, the situation became much worse when a second case of BSE came about in Washington State. It was after I became Minister of Agriculture on December 12 and it was a time, I can say to all hon. members, that has taught me the importance of the House and working together with members of Parliament to work toward solutions to issues.

This is an issue on which the Government of Canada has moved swiftly. With the support of the Prime Minister, other ministers and caucuses in the House, we have been able to send messages to our international partners about how safe not only the beef is, but how safe all food is in Canada.

We had a situation in Canada where the consumption of beef rose because Canadians understood that Canada's regulatory system was a system they could trust and they knew the beef they ate was safe. That did not come about just because one day consumers thought it would be nice to think that. It came about because of the hard work that had taken place behind the scenes by groups such as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and people within government who had worked with commodity groups and farmers across the country to come up with ways in which we could convince consumers.

We would not have been successful in getting our beef into other countries around the world had consumption in Canada not risen. It was the rising consumption in Canada that gave other governments the ability to recognize that Canadian beef was safe, and they therefore opened their borders to Canadian beef.

Once we had dealt with the issue in Ottawa, I had the opportunity to sit down with farm groups across the country and talk to them about what more they felt the Government of Canada could do in this situation. They told me, first and foremost, that we needed to get out and market Canadian beef around the world. That is exactly what we did.

I managed to take a couple of my colleagues, the member for Tobique—Mactaquac and the member for Medicine Hat, with me to Korea , Japan and Washington. We met with government officials, the ministers of agriculture in all these countries and the ministers of trade in some countries We talked about what we had done in Canada.

We talked about how we had listened to an international peer review panel that reported on Canada. The panel had given a glowing report on the actions that Canada had taken since its case of BSE. It had made recommendations on which the Government of Canada was moving. These recommendations could give not only Canadians the confidence about eating beef, they also could give the consumers in those countries the confidence that the beef they were eating was probably some of the safest beef in the world to eat.

We managed to convince the Japanese to look at issues other than just the way they handled BSE. Their minister talked about measures that we could take in Canada, not exactly the same measures but similar or equivalent to get our beef into Japan. That was a good step forward and one on which we have followed up.

What I have done since that time is send an inspector, a veterinarian from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, to Tokyo, Japan to be on the ground. The inspector will work with the Japanese and countries in Asia, to show them what we are doing in Canada and talk to them about what the scientists at OIE, or the international body that regulates this, have said about what Canada has done. The inspector will also try get them to understand the importance of following the science and following what is coming out of the OIE.

We also got an agreement to work with them toward recognizing that the situation such as in Europe was a totally different than the situation in Canada. A group like the OIE could recognize that there is a difference between the risk factors in Europe and the risk factors in Canada. We only had one cow, which happened to be over six-and-a-half-years of age, which happened to get this disease prior to the time when we brought in the feed ban. I explained to people in Japan and Korea that we had a firewall and that firewall was taking the SRMs out of the food system.

We then moved on to Washington and talked with our Mexican and American counterparts. We got an agreement that we would have officials work toward normalizing trade in beef in North America. We also got an agreement from them to work in the OIE and to work together to try to change and get it to recognize we had a different situation in the North American case than that of the case in Europe. Finally, we got an agreement with them to work together in terms of getting North American beef into export markets around the world.

We have followed up on that. We have had meetings again with our American counterparts and we are trying to work through these problems. As many members may know, the international peer review panel in the United States reported and made recommendations to the Americans which were not unlike ours.

In the report of the panel one thing it has said to the Americans is they need to take a leadership role when it comes to trade in this area. They need to show that by opening up their borders to Canada they are following the science and recognizing that the risk in Canada is no different than the risk in the United States. The risk is so minimal that Canadians can continue, and Americans can also continue, to have the confidence in the beef they eat.

[Agriculture, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question and I also want to thank the members of my caucus who have pushed for a take note debate tonight on this very serious issue.

I want to assure him and all hon. members today that the Government of Canada takes this issue very seriously and that we will continue to work hard internationally to get the borders open to Canadian beef. I also want to thank the hon. member for bringing up the United States peer review report, which of course was announced today, and it is one that the government--

[Agriculture, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, what the Government of Canada did first and foremost was to sit down with the industry to get an understanding as to where it saw the role of the federal government.

We then took the responses from the industry which told us that we needed to get out to market Canadian beef around the world. This is why I, along with one of the member's colleagues and another one of my colleagues went to Japan. We went to Korea and Washington.

In fact, in Washington, we received agreement from the governments of the United States and Mexico to work together on a North American strategy. This is an issue for all farmers in North America and it is one of--

[Agriculture, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am certain there is not a member in the House who does not feel for the farmers, the farm families and indeed the communities across this country impacted by the BSE situation.

The Government of Canada takes this situation very seriously as evidenced by the work of the Prime Minister and other ministers on this, to work toward getting that border open.

In the meantime, these are difficult times for Canadian farmers and we will do everything within our power to ensure that the impact this is having on them is not an impact that will remove them out of the industry.

[Children's Aid Society, September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on an issue that is of the utmost importance, that of child protection.

October serves to bring much needed attention to the plight of the abused and neglected child. In order to raise public awareness of the ongoing effort to end child abuse and neglect, the Children's Aid Society of Haldimand--Norfolk has requested that I wear this purple ribbon.

The Children's Aid Society is a lifeline and a safe haven to Ontario's children and families most in need of assistance. I am proud of this organization's long history of leadership in protecting children.

In my own riding of Haldimand--Norfolk--Brant, our Children's Aid Society has assisted over 1,900 families and has taken 138 children into care in the last year alone.

For over 100 years the Haldimand--Norfolk Children's Aid Society has performed a vital service to our community. I gladly wear this ribbon as I salute the venerable work of this organization.

[Petitions, September 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I also rise to present a petition to the House that concerns religious freedom and the addition of sexual orientation to the Criminal Code signed by a number of people in my constituency calling upon the government to petition Parliament to protect the rights of Canadians to share their religious beliefs.

[Petitions, June 10th, 2003]

Last, Mr. Speaker, petitioners in my riding pray upon Parliament to pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[Petitions, June 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, another petition from a group in my riding is calling upon Parliament to repeal section 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act. This is about providing rural route mail couriers the right to have a union.

[Petitions, June 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have three sets of petitions from constituents in my riding, who have done a lot of work to put together these petitions.

The first petition calls on the Government of Canada to protect the rights of Canadians to be free to share their religious beliefs without fear of prosecution. They are concerned about a private member's bill in the House on that subject and call upon Parliament to recognize the fact that people should have religious freedoms.