Lyle Vanclief

[Agriculture, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have had at least seven conversations with my counterpart in the United States in the last number of days.

The hon. member is correct in the statistics he gives, except that the trace out being done in those quarantined herds, the tracing ahead of the animals that left that farm and back from where that cow came, is not yet complete.

The work we have done so far definitely proves there is only one cow and, no, it did not get into the food chain. We need to complete that, and that work is ongoing at this time. We are very fortunate that we have the best food surveillance system in the world and when we show--

[Agriculture, May 15th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, over a week ago I sent a personal letter to every holder of a NISA account in this country to explain the program. That is 160,000 letters that we sent out to explain it to the farmers. At the request of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the farm organizations we completed a third party review. The results of that have been published. They said very clearly that the proposed program was better than the programs that we had in the past.

I repeat that I am awaiting the signatures of the provinces. As soon as the provincial governments sign it, that program will be there for the producers. I urge the hon. member to get--

[Agriculture, May 15th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the hon. member was in the standing committee on agriculture a few weeks ago when I went over the proposed program for the producers. That program is out there with the provinces. I have authority from our government to sign the agreements with the provinces, and we will put that in place. One province has already signed so their producers can have that protection for this year, and I await the signatures of all the others.

[Agriculture, May 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows very well that we have one of the best systems in the world to analyze whether a genetically modified crop is either registered or grown. It is examined by Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for a number of reasons. That process is taking place at the present time. We do not know what the results of that will be.

As a government we also know that there are a number of factors that must be taken into consideration in addition to that and we are looking at ways in which that can be considered as well.

[Agriculture, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I gave that answer to the hon. member. Last year we put forward $54.5 million on top of $7 million just prior to that in order to improve our system. However, I first have to stress that the applications have to be there.

[Agriculture, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the system of regulations and registration of agricultural chemicals, as with all chemicals in Canada, is reviewed by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency in Health Canada.

First, there has to be an application for them by the company that wishes to use them. As well, the government put over $60 million in place to help the industry in minor use registration. We will now be able to move to a program similar to that in the United States IR-4, but the application for those products first has to be applied for. We will then make sure that the application for those in use in Canada is safe.

[Agriculture, May 1st, 2003]

No, we are not, Mr. Speaker. We are working on that so we can, hopefully, come up with a solution in order to assist the dairy industry in this. However it is interesting to hear the comments about supply management coming from a party that does not even support supply management.

[Agriculture, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the working group of the four departments involved in this, revenue, finance, trade and agriculture, met with the industry group and took its recommendations.

Those recommendations are being considered at this time and we will be making a decision in order to see the direction that we can take. We recognize the erosion of some products in the dairy industry and we will do all we possibly can to stop it.

[Agriculture, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, those three pillars are very clear. The industry was part of that. The government was part of that. Part of the mandate to the WTO of this government is that on supply management the decisions of domestic marketing and the protection of that system will be made here in Canada. That is the position of the government. Industry agrees with it and that is the position our negotiators are taking as well.

[Agriculture, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in some of the recent decisions Canada made it very clear that we would not support the Harbinson's report on modalities. That emphasizes and stresses the support that the government has for supply management in this country. We recognize what it does for producers, for consumers and for the economy of our country. We will continue with that full and strong support for supply management.