Charlie Penson

[Supply, June 12th, 2003]

Yes, the Prime Minister has the new museum in his riding and it goes on and on.

But there are other areas. There are what we consider to be misdirected priorities. Business grants would be one of them. The NDP used to have a saying: corporate welfare. The NDP wanted to cancel corporate welfare. In my view corporate welfare is still alive and doing very well. Quite frankly, the Canadian Alliance has a problem with corporate welfare too. We think that if Canadians want to buy shares in Bombardier, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney or all of these companies, let them buy shares. They can do that, but why should the Government of Canada be giving these huge companies taxpayers' money?

The government has a very funny program called Technology Partnerships Canada. The government calls it a repayable contribution. Now what is the world is that? At one time the government used to just give them the money through grants, but it had to dress this up somehow because the public was catching on and did not want the government doing that. So now they call it a repayable contribution.

What is that? We have not seen much on the repayable part since that TPC program went into effect in 1995. In fact, there has been only a 2% return on investment for the Government of Canada. We think there is a lot of room for the government to find the resources it needs to put into this kind of program, but it does mean that the government has to slap its fingers and it has to discipline itself. The government has to cut back on spending. We think there are a lot of areas where that can be done.

Who would be the winners in all of this? The taxpayers are taxpayers whether they pay municipal tax, provincial tax or federal tax. It is all the same person we are talking about here, but we do know that in rural and urban municipalities there is a decline in infrastructure. It is old and it needs to be replaced and those are huge capital expenditures. We think a source of revenue that could be derived which is predictable and non-political is the way to go. Giving up tax points means that the government then has to honour that. If the government gives up these tax points and tells the provinces that the 10¢ a litre fuel tax is theirs, it cannot move back in and put another tax on it if it is given up. I think this is the way to go. We just need a government that can control itself and get control of its spending and there is room indeed to fund the program we are talking about. I certainly hope it does take place.

[Supply, June 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre.

It is a pleasure for me to rise today as the finance critic for the Canadian Alliance to take part in the supply day motion put forward by our party.

This is a very important issue for us. We know there is a need for infrastructure spending, infrastructure projects, especially in the municipalities. A lot of that takes place in major cities across the country. We know there is deteriorating infrastructure, whether it be water and sewer projects or highways.

My colleague from Saskatchewan knows the highway system in his province needs a lot of work, and it is difficult for a rural province to maintain that infrastructure. Therefore there is a need for funding to do just that.

A case has been well made for the fact that we have a deteriorating infrastructure across Canada. As I said earlier, when we think infrastructure, we think of primary infrastructure needs such as water and sewer, roads, airports, the type of thing that would enable municipalities to build upon. We do not think of infrastructure in terms of the cultural aspect such as bocce courts or recreation to that extent. There needs to be some basic infrastructure spending.

How can that be achieved by the municipalities that really do not have a source of revenue? After all, in terms of jurisdiction they are a creation of the provinces, and the provinces could certainly direct more money to them, but in many cases there is a pretty heavy load on them already. There is a ready source available for this and that is why we have identified the excise tax on gasoline.

This past year, excise tax on gasoline raised over $4.7 billion. Some people might think this is a tax on gasoline and therefore all that money goes back into the highway system or into the roads system across the country. That simply is not true. In fact only $190 million of that goes back at all. The rest goes into general revenue and essentially is a cash cow for the government.

Members of the Canadian Alliance think there is a need to establish some kind of formula that would allow our municipalities to participate, but we are respective of the jurisdictional nature of this. We do not want the federal government bypassing the provinces and sending it directly to them.

The member for Kitchener Centre spoke about how great the infrastructure program was, which was introduced by the Liberal government in 1994 after being out of office for 10 years. The difficulty with that type of infrastructure program was it was political in nature. The Liberals took advantage of the situation. We noticed that ridings represented by Liberal members received a lot more money than any other ridings across the country, and yet there was a huge need all across Canada. As I pointed out, my riding of Peace River received approximately one-third as much money as the riding in Winnipeg which was represented by the minister of foreign affairs at the time, Lloyd Axworthy. That was pretty consistent across the board.

We have to move away from this formula of picking winners and losers depending on who one voted for in an election. We need to establish some kind of formula that will allow municipalities with deteriorating infrastructures to have some kind of dedicated source of revenue.

There is currently 10¢ a litre excise tax on fuel and it raises about $4.7 billion. That tax room should be given up by the federal government and given over to the provinces. Then the provinces can dedicate that money to infrastructure to the municipalities. If the provinces had already have paid for that need, they would realize it as a gain or would not have to exercise that tax themselves in their jurisdiction. They would have that choice. It is a source of revenue that could be dedicated to the provinces and then ultimately to the municipalities if the government had enough courage to do so.

What do I mean when I say “enough courage to do so”? I mean that the federal government would have to forgo $4.7 billion in revenue. I think we need to explain where that comes from. That comes out of revenue which this year will be about $180 billion.

We have seen in the budget introduced on February 18 that the Liberal government likes to spend. To be exact, it is on a spending spree like we have not seen since the Trudeau days. We think part of it is that the Prime Minister wants to leave and buy himself a legacy, much the way a person would buy oneself some kind of degree from some university down in the deep south, where if enough money is paid they will give out a piece of paper. It seems to me, by the way, that a person who has to buy himself a legacy after 40 years has not been doing very much.

In my view I think the government has a lot of room to forgo that $4.7 billion. Some of that money might come from the Solicitor General's department. I think the gun registry program would be a good place for us to look for it. As well, the Minister of Finance has given a directive to all departments to look for ways that they can go through a program review to cut a billion dollars in expenditures. We think there is a lot more to be cut.

In fact, I would look to the Solicitor General's department. The overrun on the gun registry has been almost a billion dollars in itself and is probably approaching $2 billion. There is a good place to start.

It means that the federal government has to live with $4.7 billion less than it is currently living with. We realize that is a tough time for people who like to tax and to spend other people's money, but I do not think it would be that difficult. I think a program review is the right way to go. We believe that a lot more money than that can be realized just from cutting waste and inefficient spending and changing priorities for government spending. Let me talk about a few of them.

In the waste department, we have seen the scandals at HRDC and the billion dollars that seem to be lost there. We know that the advertising contract scandal continues to bubble. In fact it is raised almost daily in the House of Commons.

[Supply, June 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member for Kitchener Centre talk about the infrastructure program that was introduced by the Liberal government in 1994. I know there are a lot of Liberals applauding across the country because they are the ones who seem to benefit the most from it.

In fact it was very interesting. The member talked about how good the infrastructure program is. Most people think of infrastructure as being things like roads, streets, airports, water and sewers, but there seem to be a lot of bocce courts that were funded under the Liberal government. In fact the fairness aspect seemed to be sorely lacking. I recall that the member from Winnipeg, Lloyd Axworthy who was a minister at the time, seemed to get about three times as much money in his riding as I did in my riding of Peace River, and there was no shortage of applications.

Would it not be better to move to a system that did away with the political interference with infrastructure programs that are paid out on a political basis? Would it not be better to give some structure to the municipalities so that they could count on a constant source of revenue such as the gas tax coming from the provinces and given up by the federal government? Would that not be a far better program to implement rather than the politically based infrastructure program we have seen in the past?

[The Economy, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the 15% appreciation in the Canadian dollar since the beginning of the year should have been a good news story for Canadians, however the impact is driving and pinching our exporters because there has been no corresponding decrease in cost of production.

Will the minister bring in lower taxes for the business sector in order to offset the competitive disadvantage faced by our exporters?

[The Economy, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in his February budget the Minister of Finance forecasted economic growth of 3.2%. However, since that time the Canadian economy has been hit by a series of shocks: SARS, the BSE outbreak, closing of the cod fishery, the ongoing softwood lumber dispute, and an appreciating Canadian dollar.

With all these economic disturbances, will the Minister of Finance introduce a fiscal and economic update that scales down government spending to bring it in line with the new realities of the economy?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 27th, 2003]

I guess I was not supposed to mention that, Mr. Speaker.

I do want to deal with the issue. The record really needs to be clarified in response to the member's question. I did not blame Canada for September 11 at all. All I said was that there is a new reality after September 11. The Americans are a lot more concerned about their security and they will be moving to tighten up that security. Whether Canada is part of the package of tightening it up or not depends on us.

I do blame the Liberal government and the present administration for not cooperating and not working with the United States on the security issue as much as it should. Any possible slowdown at the border that results from the U.S. tightening security and putting systems in place that may slow down cross-border flow in Canada is a real problem for Canadian businesses that cross the border. There is about $1.5 billion in two-way trade a day, but clearly we are a major beneficiary of exports to the United States. That is what I am talking about.

The Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States must have a working relationship to discuss those kinds of issues. Because it is such an integrated North American market, we better hope that we are part of the solution and not part of the problem in addressing security issues.

In terms of the Canadian dollar, I was saying that the Liberal government has used the low Canadian dollar as a crutch. I think there are records of the Prime Minister who, 10 or 15 years ago, was talking about a deliberate policy of a low Canadian dollar. In addition to that, I was saying that there have been some major studies done, especially by the industry committee. My colleague from Edmonton Southwest is a member of that committee. We have found that Canada's position in terms of competitiveness and productivity has been only about 80% of that of the United States. Witness after witness who came before the committee talked about the need to get those productivity levels up. However, they also talked about the need for major tax cuts to allow that to happen.

Now that the Canadian dollar has started to rise, I said that this should be a good news story for us. For some industries it is, but a large part of our export industry cannot stand the Canadian dollar rising that much unless there is a corresponding decrease in the cost of production. A major part of that is corporate and personal tax rates and things like payroll taxes, including the capital tax. I know cuts were introduced, but it is a five year phase-out. We need to accelerate the corporate tax rate cuts that were introduced in budget 2000 and we need to accelerate the phase-out of the capital tax.

In terms of jobs, the Canadian economy had been rolling along pretty strongly, but I believe that there is a lag time between good times and bad times in terms of the Canada-U.S. economy. It seems to me that the U.S. economy has been on the rocks for about a year and a half and we are just starting to feel the effects of that in Canada. The Canadian dollar is appreciating as a result of the U.S. dollar going down not just against Canadian currency but against all currencies worldwide. I believe part of the reason is because of its current account deficit of over $500 billion.

As long as the Americans were attracting investment, especially into their information technology sector--in the United States that was such a big sector--it did not really hurt them, but that sector has cooled off substantially. Now the current account deficit is a big problem for them. I believe that the U.S. administration is not unhappy about seeing its dollar depreciate against other currencies, the Euro, for example.

Canada has seen an appreciation against the U.S. dollar of about 17%. Whether that will be sustained or not, I do not know, but if it is, the point I was making is that Canada must recognize that there is a substantial part of our economy that needs some major tax relief to correct the fundamentals and allow the Canadian dollar to rise to be a good news story for us.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to answer those questions, however they are a little misdirected. The member said we blamed the Canadian government.

I would hope that he would stay to listen to the answer to his question, Mr. Speaker. It seems to me a little discourteous to ask a question and then leave the House.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this is a good opportunity to rise today to speak Bill C-28, the budget implementation act. At the outset, the Canadian Alliance is very disappointed with the government in terms of its approach to the budget in this year of 2003. We believe it has taken the wrong focus and wrong approach to this budget, and there needs to be major adjustments, even at this stage, to the spending commitments it made.

This budget was brought in on February 18. It increased the amount of program spending by the federal government from $124 billion in 2002 to $150 billion in 2003, a $26 billion increase in three years. That is almost a 20% increase in spending on an annual basis, and clearly it is not sustainable. We pointed that out at the time, but it was pretty clear even back then that this was intended to be a legacy budget for the Prime Minister, and probably a leadership budget for the Minister of Finance.

What we told the Liberal Party and the people of Canada on February 18 is just all the more accentuated now because there are significant changes to the economy that would indicate the government simply has to move away from some of the budget commitments it made on February 18 in terms of the spending; spending increases that clearly cannot be maintained or sustained. The reason I say that is because we are seeing a lot of factors starting to gather. However even back on February 18 it was clear the economy was starting to slow down.

The United States economy was bumping along the bottom in terms of major changes such as the collapse of the IT sector, the information technology sector of the United States. Also the stock market had a big hit in the United States in terms of the confidence of the people who were buying stocks. By the way, that is a pretty big part of society in the United States. Almost 30% of the public own stocks and bonds. The Americans confidence was hurt by some of the scandals in the United States leading up to Enron and other matters, and it was clear the United States economy was not going to recover very quickly.

How can the Liberal Party suggest that Canada can go it alone in terms of growth in the economy if the United States is not growing or if the recovery is not underway? It was clear back then to us that could not be maintained. Now we see the Bank of Canada and other economists around the country saying that rates of growth have to be adjusted downward from those projections made by finance minister on February 18. He was talking about 3.2% growth for next year but it has already been revised down to 2.5% and may be revised down further.

We have a number of factors right here in Canada that are having a major effect on the economy. The rising Canadian dollar, or the depreciating U.S. dollar, is one of those. The 2% spread in interest rates between Canada and the United States is attracting investment in Canada and driving up the Canadian dollar. The huge current account deficit in the United States is driving down the U.S. dollar against other currencies around the world.

This should be a celebration for Canada. Canadians should be able to celebrate the fact that our dollar has appreciated. Unfortunately, past policies by the Liberal government and the other one sitting down the way, when it had its brief time in office, had a major detrimental effect to the Canadian economy. We are now only 80% as productive as the United States. Our living standards are only 70% of that of the United States. Clearly these have a big impact on us.

One would think that a rising dollar should be good news for Canadians, and it is for some people. However we are a major exporting country and as such, the cost of production in Canada has to be lower to compensate for the cost of the Canadian dollar. Clearly that is starting to have an effect on the economy. There are industries talking about layoffs as a result of it.

Over 30 years we have seen this long term decline. I do not think it was a natural decline. Back 30 years ago, and over the 100 years previous, the Canadian and the U.S. economies could be charted on an analytical basis. There are people who chart these things. Through good times and bad times, ups and downs, the graphs showed basically the same function for the two economies.

About 30 years ago that started to change and the Canadian economy started to dip. I believe it was because of public policies that were pursued by the Liberal and Conservative governments of the day that had a major impact. In fact the size of government in the United States has not changed much in 30 years, representing roughly 30% of the GDP of the country. In Canada in 30 years, those fellows across the way have grown the size of government from about 30% to 42% of GDP of the country. That takes up a pretty big chunk of the economy.

If this was all productive spending, it would not be too bad, but we know there is a lot of waste in government, particularly in this government, for things like the gun registry which has cost $1 billion and is still running. That really personifies what the problem is. The government has wasted $1 billion in the EI program. A lot of grants and subsidies have been given to the business sector, and some people would say that is a good thing.

If Canadian taxpayers wants to invest in General Electric or Bombardier, they can do that. There are stocks out there that they can buy. They should not have to do it as taxpayers of the country for something committed to by this Liberal government. Those are the kinds of things that have caused the Canadian government to rise as a percentage of GDP and a bigger take of the economy. This is part of our productivity problem.

Witness after witness appeared before the industry committee. Three major studies have been done at the industry committee about Canada's competitive position and our productivity. They have told us that we need lower taxes in Canada, probably lower than the United States, to have a competitive edge but we do not have that. The U.S. President pushed a package through Congress the other day for about $500 billion, Canadian, a further tax cut in the United States. We were already behind the United States in corporate and personal tax income rates and it is moving further. That will put us into a more uncompetitive position.

What we need is a realistic approach to this. The government has to have an economic statement recognizing the problems we have with the rising Canadian dollar. We need to recognize the slow down in the economy. We need to recognize that things like SARS and mad cow disease do have an impact on our economy. The closure of the Canada-U.S. border to imports of over $4 billion worth of beef has an impact.

The Canadian dollar rising 18% without any corresponding decrease in corporate or personal tax rates and red tape also have an impact. A canola farmer knows that instinctively. The price of canola went down from $8 a bushel to $7 a bushel just on the exchange rate. There is no corresponding decrease in the cost of production. This is hurting us and will continue to hurt us unless the government reacts by dealing with this productivity factor. The government has to lower tax rates.

I call on the government to accelerate its corporate tax cuts which are being done over five years. There are some budget measures on resource tax allowance and some things have been done on the capital tax. However they have long phase-out periods of five years. I call on the government to move quickly to bring those tax cuts in on an accelerated time schedule.

We have a problem here. The Liberal government is absolutely committed to spending. It is the old tax and spend regime. It is like the Trudeau era Liberals are back. These are the kinds of Trudeau era policies that got us into all this trouble to begin with. That government had spending rates of 6%, 8% or 10% a year. Under the current Prime Minister we are back to these rates. This year's spending alone has increased by 12% or 15%. How can that be maintained? It cannot be maintained, and it was clearly evident at the time the budget was brought down.

The Prime Minister and the finance minister buried their heads in the sand. The Prime Minister wants to do a bunch of social spending because he has to buy himself a legacy. That is a sad commentary, after 40 years in office to have to think of some way a new spending program can be invented in order to have a legacy for oneself. That in itself in my view is the legacy, and it is not a very good legacy at that.

The Liberals have put us in a very difficult position. They have a dug a hole for Canada of which it will be difficult for us to dig out. I believe we have the potential to have a far better and stronger economy than the United States. We cannot do that if we have been harnessed by bad policies over 30 years which have put us into a very uncompetitive position versus our major trading partner.

Why is it important that we compare ourselves with the United States? It is important because of the two-way trade flow and business we have between our two countries. We know that 87% of our exports go to the United States. The exports to the United States alone account for almost 40% of the GDP of Canada per year.

We have to think about what happens if we are not competitive and we lose manufacturing plants, such as DaimlerChrysler to the United States, because it is concerned about things such as border security. We know that 80% of the production of the automotive sector in Canada goes into the United States. Border security became a problem after September 11. The government clearly is not willing to talk with the United States about security issues. There is hardly a working relationship between the Prime Minister and the President of the United States.

Although, the Prime Minister finally did make a phone call yesterday after months of not wanting to talk to the President of the United States. I hear he talked about baseball. I hope he talked about things such as the Canadian border in relation to the BSE issue and about a number of other issues, such as security issues about which the Americans are clearly concerned. Like it or not, the Americans will take measures to deal with that security issue on the Canada-U.S. border. That could result in a slowdown of product crossing the border.

Two and a half years ago I was in a major steel plant. To illustrate how integrated we have become and how business works across the Canada-U.S. border, the steel rolled that day had been ordered about four months earlier. One thing I did not know is the plant makes about 200 different types of steel there. It is a very specialized business. The steel rolled that day was shipped out that very afternoon to a car manufacturing plant. It was stamped into fenders later that afternoon on a just in time delivery basis.

What does that mean? Why has the plant done that? It has done that because the cost of production has been too high. The plant had to get efficiencies into the system. The cost of carrying inventory is very high. Basically the steel plant eliminated that problem. It does not have to carry inventory any more as a result of delivering that product on a just in time delivery.

Why is that an important factor? It is important because any slowdown at the Canada-U.S. border influences that. All of a sudden if companies have to begin carrying inventory again, there is a massive cost to that. Therefore, the United States is concerned.

Companies that are thinking of new investment in Canada are concerned too because if there is a slowdown at that border and 80% of their production goes into the United States, then they might as well locate their plants in the United States.

There are a few other problems on the horizon that we have been dealing with for a while. They also have to do with a poor Canada-U.S. relationship. It is something the government has actually been very bad at. In fact I think the government enjoys tweaking the nose of Uncle Sam and sticking its finger in his eye. I am talking about duties that have been put on wheat for Canadian farmers.

I think this action is in direct response to a government that has not cooperated with the United States on a number of issues. We think the softwood lumber issue with the United States will be resolved in our favour but it has been a longstanding dispute. It costs our Canadian producers 27% duty I believe. On top of that the Canadian dollar appreciating has made it very difficult for our softwood lumber producers to compete in the United States. There have been some job layoffs.

These are the kinds of things that have to be addressed. This is the reason the government needs to come out with a new economic statement this spring. It has to recognize the realities that there is a changing situation with the economy. It has to recognize that it clearly made a wrong assessment, that the United States is not recovering as quickly as it thought it might.

United States interest rates are still only 1.25%. There is a concern about deflation in the United States and the economy is not responding very fast. So, between that and the rising dollar as a result of the depreciating U.S. currency, these are causing us a great deal of difficulty.

I call on the government to bring in a new economic statement where it would accelerate corporate tax cuts and take into account what the United States just passed through its congress, a massive tax bill of over $500 billion dollars over 10 years. Some people think that this may be picked up and continued on, and it may be a lot more than that.

We were far behind in terms of charging too much in taxes. Now the United States has moved the yardstick even further and it is clear that Canada must react. The finance minister is finally admitting that the economy will not perform as well as he suggested on February 18. If he has already made that assessment, perhaps he should come out with an economic statement that says we are prepared to make those necessary tax cuts on the personal income tax side and go further on the employment insurance rate cut so we stop overcharging Canadians.

Even this year the government is overcharging Canadians almost $3 billion in terms of excess employment insurance rates. This just goes into general revenue and as we know there is a lot of waste by the government. Day after day we hear about the ad contracts where millions and millions of dollars are being wasted.

The government and the finance minister are clearly distracted. He is running for the leadership of the Liberal Party. He is hardly ever in the House so that we can ask him a question. Clearly his focus is not where it should be. If he cannot handle the job, perhaps he should step down as finance minister and let somebody take over while he is running his leadership campaign.

We on this side have somebody we could suggest. We could clearly provide a few names for him in terms of doing that. If he is going to take his job seriously he had better come up with a new improved economic statement that would recognize the new realities of the Canadian economy and our major trading partner. We need to make the proper adjustments so that Canada can be competitive and get back on the road to improving our competitive position and productivity.

That is my challenge to the government. We want to see an economic statement this spring that would recognize all of those realities that I have just been talking about.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, May 26th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I want to indicate that I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Yellowhead.

I am happy this debate is happening because it is a very important issue. I am not very happy with the circumstances that brought it about but the Canadian Alliance members felt it was important that we have this emergency debate. We put in the request for it so we could air this item fully and let people know exactly our perspective on this topic.

Tuesday last week I got a call from my office saying that there was an important call from the Department of Agriculture and that an official wanted to brief me on a problem in my riding, I had no idea what to expect. It was not a very happy circumstance a few minutes later when the gentleman who briefed me told me there was a case of mad cow disease and it originated in an operation in the constituency of Peace River. That is the kind of news no one wants to hear quite frankly.

It took us all by surprise and certainly it took the wind out of the sails of those people in agriculture and those people who depend on that agricultural industry.

We are talking about a hardy lot, ranchers and farmers who have built up operations, carved them out of the prairies or carved them out of the forest and built up herds of animals through a lot of hard work. They are people who have contributed a lot to our society. They are a hardy stock indeed. This problem really did a number on them. They are concerned about their livelihood and they are concerned about the disease itself, how to isolate it and ensure that it does not spread. That is what I want to talk about today.

Peace River constituency is the place where this originated. This young man moved from Mississippi just three years ago. It is my understanding that he and his brother farmed crawfish in Mississippi. They came looking for opportunity in the Peace River country, as many people do. It is a land of opportunity and a place for farmers and others to develop their skills.

The man bought a cattle herd, never suspecting that he might have the animal with mad cow disease, only finding out when it went to market.

In the Peace River country there are over 2,800 cattle operations, farmers and ranchers who raise cattle. My brother has an operation that has 1,500 head of cattle, which is a very big operation. It takes a lot of work. In fact, there are over 380,000 cattle in the Peace River constituency. It is a huge industry. Farm equipment dealers and truckers are all affected. Farm equipment dealers sell over half their product to cattle operations. That is how large it is in my constituency. Things like auction marts and so on are affected as well.

Therefore it is very important to keep this issue in perspective. Yes, it is a big health concern, one with which we have deal. I think all people involved recognize that. We have to keep it in perspective because it is one case at this point, and may not be any more than that, out of 13.4 million cattle in Canada, with 5.2 million cattle in Alberta alone. As I said, there are almost 400,000 in my own constituency. If this turns out to be more than that, it still probably will be a very small situation compared with the total number we have.

However this is a huge industry. It is a huge economic downturn if this continues to develop, especially if the Canada-U.S. border is closed. It is important to us because we export so much product to the United States. My understanding is that we export about $4 billion worth of live or processed cattle to the United States per year.

It is a big industry in the U.S. too. There are 100 million cattle in the United States, which is a lot more than we have, so our cattle represents a pretty small part of their imports but it is still an important integrated business. The economies of Canada and the United States have become much more integrated in many sectors in the last few years. The automotive sector everyone knows about, but it is much more than that.

There are cattle from Alberta and from all of Canada in U.S. feedlots. There are cattle from the United States in Canadian feedlots and in my riding. I know the members for Medicine Hat and Lethbridge spoke earlier about how big the industry was in their ridings. It is important that we get on top of this issue just as soon as we can.

My colleague, our agriculture critic, said that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency did a pretty good job on this. It is on top of it as it should be, but it is important that we deal with it quickly. The agency has taken the proper steps. It has isolated these herds. It has quarantined them when it has found out where they are. It is doing the trace out to find out, forward and backward, where this animal came from, where the offspring of the cow in question went to, and these have been identified. It has also destroyed the index or the herd from the Peace River country. It trucked it to a facility and the word came today that of the 150 cattle in the herd, no other animals tested positive. That is a very good sign indeed.

When the United States closed the border, it was a serious blow to us. However we can understand why it did that. It has a public which is concerned about it, especially after what happened in Britain over the years. The Americans want to know that we are handling this in a manner and dealing with it effectively and quickly.

I think Ann Veneman, the secretary of the department of agriculture in the United States, sent inspectors here to work with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in the province of Alberta to satisfy themselves that we were doing the necessary things to deal with it. They will no doubt go back and say that is exactly what has happened. The trace out will be in place pretty quickly and we will know exactly with what we are dealing. Those affected animals will be destroyed if need be and Canada will be back on the road to providing a very safe product.

However I want to emphasize in the clearest possible way, we have to keep this in perspective. There is probably only one animal at the moment out of 13.5 million cattle in Canada. Since 1987, Britain and other countries in Europe have had mad cow disease. Yes, it is a serious problem there, but we should think of the perspective. We know that 130 people died as a result of eating product from these animals, but that is out of 60 million people.

We know it is serious. We know we have to deal it. We know we have to isolate it to stop it from happening, but we should keep it in perspective, please. There is a huge industry and a huge economic impact for my riding and for all agricultural communities in which agricultural producers are working. There also is a huge economic impact for the country. If we get enough bad press and bad things happening all at once, I suggest it will slow down the Canadian economy.

It is important that we work with the United States in this integrated market to deal with this quickly. It is absolutely imperative that we have good communications with the U.S. authorities. I am glad to see the Minister of Agriculture is working with his counterpart, Ann Veneman, to do just that.

It is vitally important that the Prime Minister realize how serious this is and make that phone call to George Bush. He should put the personal things aside. He has to talk to the President of the United States. We need the President to reassure his public, once this trace out is done, that Canada is dealing effectively with this problem, it is being isolated, it is being dealt with in the proper manner, so we can get back to supplying that product to the United States, or $4 billion a year. That is vitally important and I urge all the people involved, all the authorities, to continue to work as quickly as they can to deal with this issue.

I am very happy with the progress to date. We can be very happy that this will probably come to a successful resolution. I urge the Prime Minister to take that next step, reach out and talk to his counterpart in the United States to reassure the American public that Canada is doing all it can to deal with this in a very serious manner.

I know others will be debating tonight. I just want to reassure the people at home that the Canadian Alliance is taking this issue very seriously, not only from a health perspective, but from the economic perspective of those involved in the agriculture industry. This is a very important industry to us. We are working with the government and urging it to do whatever is necessary to deal with it in the proper manner.

[Question No. 199, May 26th, 2003]

Identifying each recipient with the amount and a description of the transaction, what contracts, grants and loans did the government and all of its agencies make to organizations or individuals in the riding of Perth–Middlesex from November 15, 2001, to March 1, 2003?

Return tabled.