The BSE crisis offers the Canadian beef industry an opportunity to reduce dependence on the American market, MPs said last week.
Agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief was one of them.
During an all-day House of Commons debate on the bovine spongiform encephalopathy issue, he said the integrated industry has proven to be part of the problem.
“We have lost because until we had the health situation, there was no Canada-U.S. border in the beef industry,” he said. “There really was not and the beef industry developed on that.”
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Vanclief said there now is a health border that should lead to new thinking.
“Maybe we have an opportunity to bring some of those slaughter facilities or create some of those here,” said the minister.
“We could bring some of those jobs back and create employment here. We could create products here that in the past were being brought in from someplace else using somebody else’s beef rather than our Canadian beef.”
New Democratic Party agriculture critic Dick Proctor concurred, although he said it is not a popular view among cattle producers.
“It does not want to hear this but the cattle industry is far too heavily integrated with the United States,” he told the House.
Not only does it not make sense to ship cattle south for processing, but two of the largest packing plants in the country at Brooks and High River, Alta., are foreign owned, he said.
“We should give serious consideration to building another packing plant in Canada, perhaps on the western Manitoba border or in eastern Saskatchewan where there would be more opportunity for shipping beef and producing boxed beef to go into the United States.”
One of the few dissenting voices came from Ontario Liberal Murray Calder, a farmer and parliamentary secretary to the trade minister.
Calder said industry integration actually increases pressure on the American side of the border to open.
“The beef industry is a highly integrated industry,” said Calder. “It is just as important to people in the United States who are part of the beef industry to get the border open as it is for us.”
Meanwhile, a Progressive Conservative motion that prime minister Jean Chrétien lead an all-party and industry delegation to Washington was defeated.
The motion had been passed by the all-party agriculture committee during the summer.
Only two Liberals, committee chair Paul Steckle and vice-chair Rosemarie Ur, stuck to their guns and voted in the House as they had voted in committee.
Vanclief said diplomatic and behind-the-scenes political pressure is more effective than media events.
“Actions like these…will open borders a whole lot quicker than taking a busload or planeload of people to Washington,” he said.
