Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand in the House again and support the motion before the House today, a motion that calls upon the Prime Minister to convene and lead a multi-party group to Washington with the goal in mind of seeing the border reopened to Canadian beef and, I should say, to Canadian livestock. Not only beef is affected by this.
I would like to take this opportunity to commend the members of my party for their diligence and hard work in drawing attention to the plight of the Canadian cattle industry, especially those rural members of Parliament who are faced on a daily basis with ranchers, farmers and beef producers who fear a very uncertain future knowing that the government is coming from a perspective of having no real strategy, of not understanding how to achieve what it claims it wants to achieve but still going through the exercise.
This single incident of BSE has had a very obvious and devastating impact on the complete cattle industry. It is going to take a long time to recover. To be quite frank, it is going to take a long time to recover because the Liberal government has not placed this as a priority. It has not placed it as a priority from the very outset. Regardless of what some of the members of this House have said today, we have seen other issues brought forward which have diverted the attention that should have been put on the BSE issue. In the meantime, producers are hurting.
The cattle industry has lost over a billion dollars to date and approximately 100,000 Canadians have been directly targeted by this tragedy. We obviously recognize that ranchers, cattle producers, the cow-calf individuals and the feedlot operators are being hurt. They are the obvious ones who feel the crisis at this time, but there are many others as well. There are auction houses, auction companies, stockyards, slaughterhouse owners, transporters, butchers, truckers, and even restaurant owners who pride themselves on serving only grade A Alberta beef. They have all felt the prolonged financial pinch because this government has failed to respond to the disaster to the degree that I believe it should have.
This past summer while the Prime Minister was sipping champagne in Great Britain, my leader and a number of people from caucus were in Washington speaking to Congress, speaking to those who were trying to listen to what was happening in Canada. The main purpose of their visit was to explain to our neighbours to the south the extreme impact that this was having on the family farm, on the beef industry and on businesses.
It came down to the fact that we saw the CFIA moving on tracing and tracking and we saw other people showing that this was only one isolated incident, but the government was not coming forward with a strategy on how we could see a comprehensive plan put in place that would move the Americans to reopen the border to Canadian beef. We are losing approximately $11 million per day, primarily in the beef industry, but an estimated $20 million when we look at all the other spinoffs from it.
We recognize that much more could have been done and now must be done in order to address this extremely serious issue. That is why we sent a delegation to the United States. We must get the border open before harm is done to the cattle industry and we must get it open before that harm is irreversible.
When we talk about irreversible, we talk about family farms that are disappearing. We talk about young farmers who are trying to meet payments this fall, young farmers who are calling our offices. In one instance the caller told me his payments are due on November 1. He sells his calves in the middle of October. He has land payments, equipment payments and cattle payments. What does he do at the local auction mart with the prices that he has seen there? How does he know what to do? He asked, “What can I tell my banker today?”
I would like to read to the House a couple of quotes that appeared in some of the local papers in my riding. The first one is from an article written by Murray Green in the Camrose Canadian :
The hard times farmers in this country are faced with because of the mad cow disease rest squarely on the shoulders of the federal government, according to the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties.
“The single case of BSE that was discovered on May 20 has crippled the cattle industry in Canada,” said Jack Hayden, president of the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties.
Mr. Hayden went on to say:
--we have been very frustrated in our efforts to get the federal agricultural minister on side. He doesn't even return phone calls”.
The lack of full border opening to the United States has left about 260,000 culled animals with no place to go in the market place or for slaughter. A mass slaughter is not the answer, says Hayden.
Mr. Hayden said:
Even a partial reopening of the border is not going to counteract the devastating effects the widespread border closures have caused...farmers need help now and the federal politicians have to get on board.
I would add that before the Liberal government finally does make some steps, when it finally does get on board, I would suggest that it let the Canadian public know that there is a strategy, that there is a plan, that there is a way we can move or influence that border to be opened.
We have seen that the Canadian Cattlemen's Association has come up with a plan, a four-part strategy to get the border open. We have had no such indication from the government. The minister and members on the opposite side stood in the House today to say that they have put $200 million here and $260 million there, that they have put this much money in, but we have not seen a plan. Until the industry knows that the government has an idea on how it can do it, there is no confidence in the border being opened and there is certainly no confidence in the government.
We want to be assured today that when there is a plan, when the government finally does disclose some type of plan that it may be making in the future, not only will that plan come out of round table discussions, which already have taken place and are very important, we want to be assured that the people who are devising this plan are individuals who are involved in the industry, that is, individuals who have mud and other substances on their boots and who understand the cattle industry and the effects that this is having on the family farm.
We know there is a litany of people across the way who have individuals in ivory towers who will come up with some type of strategy, but we want to be assured that ministers such as Shirley McClellan from Alberta are involved. We want to know that groups such as the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and other Alberta people like Neil Jahnke and Arno Doerksen are involved in the devising of the strategy.
Blair Vold is well known in Alberta. He owns the auction company Vold, Jones and Vold, in Ponoka. He said that we must “stop and think about the anti-American bashing that has come about because of the border closure to Canadian beef”.
In a letter to the Bashaw Star , Mr. Vold said:
We in the cattle industry, not only in Alberta but also in all of Canada, have developed a very large trading relationship with our American neighbours in the cattle business....Whether some like it or not, we in the cattle industry have built a relationship with our U.S. neighbours that has drawn respect and friendships over many years of cattle deals done on handshakes and phone calls.
Being a neighbour, whether it's in town or country, is no different than being a neighbour with the Americans. It's the people that live beside each other than need to respect and support each other. Americans are our friends and neighbours, so let's respect them more and bash them less....We have a lot of work to do yet, and there are a lot of good cattle people and politicians on both sides of the border that will get the task done, so let's let them do their work.
Yet we see that the job is not being completed. We have seen infant steps. We need to be sure that all those people are brought into the process. We need to be assured and we need to thank Canadians for their response in the consumption of the amount of beef that has taken place this summer. I have attended many beef rallies and beef on a bun dinners night after night after night.
