Question - February 4th, 2004

Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.): Mr. Chair, I listened very carefully to what my hon. colleague across the way said this evening because I am sure that she is very concerned with the way that this money has passed from government into other people's hands. She has intimated that the money has gone into the wrong hands. For some reason, she believes that some of the money has gone back to feed the Liberal Party of Canada. I do not know how that correlation can be arrived at, but somehow I got that message from her message to us this evening.

I wonder if she could tell us how she feels that this money that we believe we delivered to farmers could have been delivered in a more effective way so that the farmers could have put that money in their pockets. I am also wondering whether she could tell us who she thinks made all this money, given that some of the money has gone into someone's hands. Who are those people and organizations that have this money and could give it to the Liberal Party of Canada?

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew-Nippising-Pembrooke, CPC): Mr. Chair, first of all, I did not say that the money went directly back into the Liberal Party of Canada, but it is interesting that the government member would say that.

I did not get a chance to talk about solutions. One of the options that we do have to look at is going to our different markets, if we can get an agreement in writing that if we take certain measures they will accept our cattle. For example, we have the 30 months and older cull cattle. If the other markets would agree to take our animals if we had them tested, that would be one solution. We could actually get something in return for putting the money into the testing.

The agriculture ministry says no to that because the tests are not conclusive, but there is a new test available that is being used in the European Union. It has no false negatives and the turnaround time for results is five hours. That could be implemented in Canada if we were to get an agreement that one of the criteria being met is that cattle over 30 months of age will be tested.