Agriculture minister Bob Speller sits down with Canada’s lenders this week, including Farm Credit Canada, to try to convince them to keep extending credit to Canadian farmers hurt by BSE.
“I will try to give them assurances that the government of Canada is doing everything that it can to open up the border and to speed this along quickly and to give them the assurance that these farmers should be able to carry on,” the minister said in the House of Commons during a special debate on BSE that lasted late into the night Feb. 4.
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Beyond that, the minister had little new to announce, other than acknowledgement that Ottawa may have to find more money if borders remain closed.
Speller said his priority is to open foreign borders to Canadian beef and cattle and make sure that money available to farmers through existing programs gets out quickly.
“If those dollars are not enough, if in fact this drags on and there is a greater problem, then I will go back to the government of Canada and say that more needs to be done.”
But he rebuffed opposition demands for federal compensation for sectors beyond the livestock industry that have been sideswiped by the crisis.
However, opposition MPs insisted more money will be needed.
“The minister has to push his way around at the cabinet table and get some money for the industry,” said Medicine Hat Conservative MP Monte Solberg.
The Commons debate, watched by more than 100 dairy farmers who left a national convention several blocks away to walk to Parliament Hill, gave many MPs a chance to offer their evidence of hurt and their proposed solutions.
Solberg mentioned that a constituent “rancher-cowboy” with 700 head had called that morning to say he and his sons would be out of business by April 1. “They are finished.”
Liberal Paul Steckle and many other MPs complained that the meat packers and processors had taken advantage of the crisis to profiteer.
New Brunswick Liberal Charles Hubbard, a former chair of the agriculture committee, made the strongest pitch for testing every slaughtered cow, noting that while it could cost $30 per head, dairy farmers this year receive $150 for a cull cow that was worth $700 or more last year.
“I think this would be a good investment in market acceptance,” he said in a later interview.
