AGRI Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Á

1110

The Chair (Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.))

The Chair

Mr. Rick Borotsik (Brandon—Souris, PC)

The Chair

Dr. Allan Preston (Director, Veterinary Services, Department of Agriculture and Food of Manitoba)

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1115

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1120

Mr. Marcel Gagnon (Champlain, BQ)

Dr. Allan Preston

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1125

The Chair

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Mr. Garth Routledge (Past President, Manitoba Cattle Producers Association)

The Chair

Mr. Garth Routledge

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1130

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1135

The Chair

Mr. John Whitaker (As Individual)

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1140

The Chair

Mr. Ray Armbruster (As Individual)

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1145

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1150

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1155

The Chair

Mr. Howard Hilstrom (Selkirk—Interlake, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Garth Routledge

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Â

1200

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Â

1205

Mr. Garth Routledge

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Mr. Garth Routledge

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Â

1210

Mr. Garth Routledge

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Mr. Ray Armbruster

The Chair

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Mr. Claude Duplain (Portneuf, Lib.)

Â

1215

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Claude Duplain

The Chair

Mr. John Whitaker

The Chair

Dr. Allan Preston

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1220

The Chair

Mr. Ray Armbruster

The Chair

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Mr. Dick Proctor (Palliser, NDP)

Mr. Garth Routledge

Mr. Dick Proctor

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Dick Proctor

Dr. Allan Preston

Â

1225

Mr. Dick Proctor

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Mrs. Carol Skelton (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, Canadian Alliance)

Dr. Allan Preston

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Dr. Allan Preston

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Dr. Allan Preston

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Dr. Allan Preston

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Dr. Allan Preston

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Â

1230

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Carol Skelton

Mr. Ray Armbruster

The Chair

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, Lib.)

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Â

1235

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Â

1240

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

The Chair

Mr. Ray Armbruster

The Chair

Mr. Ray Armbruster

The Chair

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Mr. Ray Armbruster

The Chair

Mr. David Anderson (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Canadian Alliance)

Â

1245

Mr. John Whitaker

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. David Anderson

The Chair

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Â

1250

The Chair

Mr. John Maloney (Erie—Lincoln, Lib.)

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. John Maloney

Mr. Ray Armbruster

Mr. John Maloney

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. John Maloney

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. John Maloney

Dr. Allan Preston

Â

1255

Mr. John Maloney

Dr. Allan Preston

Mr. Ray Armbruster

The Chair

Mr. Howard Hilstrom

Dr. Allan Preston

The Chair

Mr. Garth Routledge

The Chair

Dr. Allan Preston

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1300

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food

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NUMBER 014

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1110)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.)): I'm going to call the meeting to order. We have a quorum.

    Before we get into hearing the presentations from our visitors this morning, I want to deal with a few housekeeping items. We have two motions that need to be adopted before we proceed. These have to do with operational budgets.

    The first one is for $8,700. I believe there have been copies distributed for the membership of the committee. Is that correct?

    Do I have a mover to have the first motion adopted? Mr. Anderson. Do we have a seconder? Ms. Ur.

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: The second motion is for $13,200, as per your report. Does anyone not have the second motion?

    Mr. Rick Borotsik (Brandon—Souris, PC): We both have one of each, yes.

    The Chair: We want to make sure everyone sees it first. What about the government side?

    The members have the second motion, the one for $13,200.

    Our guests, could you bear with us this morning for just a moment?

    Have we had time to brief ourselves on it? Can we have a motion to accept the budget?

    Previous budgets that have been placed before this committee and have been approved will simply go by the wayside. We haven't needed to use the money. Therefore, we have to approve new budgets for this. I need to go to the liaison committee on behalf of the committee.

    Mr. Gagnon, do you move? Yes. Do we have a seconder? Mr. Proctor.

    (Motion agreed to)

    The Chair: Okay. We want to move then to the order of business for the day. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), today we want to look at the whole issue of tuberculosis in the elk and deer herds in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba.

    We're happy to have Dr. Allan Preston from the Department of Agriculture and Food of Manitoba with us this morning. He's a director of veterinary services.

    Welcome to the committee this morning.

    From the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association, we have Garth Routledge, who is the past president of that association, and as individuals, and I believe farmers who are farming in that capacity, we have Mr. John Whitaker and Mr. Ray Armbruster.

    Do we have them all?

    Thank you, gentlemen. We're going to give you some time to tell us your story. Then we will open the floor to the panel members, the members of the House, to question you on this issue. Perhaps then we can further explore some of the details.

    We're going to start with ten minutes. I don't know whether it's enough time to get this on the floor. If not, if you need a little more time, we're fairly generous. We do want time for questioning, but we want your story to be told adequately and fairly this morning.

    Who's first? Mr. Preston, please.

    Dr. Allan Preston (Director, Veterinary Services, Department of Agriculture and Food of Manitoba): Thank you.

    I'm pleased to have the opportunity to address this committee this morning on this important topic. I bring my comments on behalf of my minister, the Hon. Rosann Wowchuk.

    My purpose is to review the tuberculosis situation in the Riding Mountain National Park area of Manitoba from the perspective of our government. I have prepared a brief detailing my presentation. I apologize that I have not yet had it translated. We will get that detail attended to as soon as possible.

    I realize that back in November Dr. Sarah Khan from the CFIA and Greg Fenton and Mike Wong from Parks Canada attended this committee, so your committee has been familiarized to some degree with what's going on in our area. I'll make an effort not to be excessively repetitive, but there are some areas where repetition is warranted to bring the points forward.

    Bovine tuberculosis is a reportable disease in Canada governed by the federal Health of Animals Act under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It's a list A disease of the Office international des épizooties, the OIE, and although TB does occur in every country in the world, it's under strict control in most developed countries, including Canada and the United States. It's an old, historic disease. I'm going to concentrate today on the more recent findings.

    I won't go into the history and background. That information can be perused at a later time. But I think it's important to recognize that Canada embarked on a TB eradication program in the 1960s. Through herd testing and depopulation of infected herds, Canada reached a TB-free status in the mid 1980s. Please note that TB freedom according to the OIE means a disease prevalence of less than 0.5%; it does not mean zero.

    Manitoba was declared TB free in 1986. The United States Department of Agriculture officially gave all of Canada TB-free status in 1997. Our continued TB-free status hinges upon regular slaughter surveillance, random TB testing, and the absence of finding new infected herds.

    I want to point out at this point in time that there's a very distinct difference between how we handle domestic herds and how we handle wild animals with regard to TB. In the case of a domestic herd, when an infected animal is found, that herd is destroyed, compensation is paid, a cleaning and disinfection regime follows, and after a period of time the individual can repopulate. In the wild situation, that does not occur. The infected animal alone is gone, but the rest of the herd remains.

    TB has been an ongoing issue for a number of years in the cattle, elk, and white-tail deer herds in the Riding Mountain National Park area. The presence of this disease jeopardizes the health status of Manitoba's cattle herd in terms of international movement of cattle, primarily into the United States. Our surveillance work in the Riding Mountain National Park has indicated differences in rates of TB in different parts of the park, in particular the western third of the park in the area around what's known as the Birdtail Valley. We have a strong indication that the level of TB infection is higher in that area.

    Manitoba has initiated quite a few actions in the last little while to aggressively deal with this TB issue, the most important being the bovine TB management plan. This is a cooperative effort among Manitoba Agriculture, Manitoba Conservation, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Parks Canada in consultation with the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association.

    The goal of that plan is to eradicate tuberculosis, in both the domestic and the wild herds. With some of the recent activities, which I'll go into in a second, we've had to accelerate some of those actions. Indeed, some of the initiatives that Manitoba Conservation has taken have begun to move along a little more aggressively. Those measures include issuing more hunting licences, extending the length of the hunting season, providing more landowner hunting, issuing kill permits to farmers to remove problem elk from their farms, baiting of elk, and promoting accelerated kill in some of the areas where we think the disease has a higher incidence.

    In addition, we've had numerous producer meetings in the area to provide information and updates and receive input with regard to this program. We've created a support team to assist producers who have the misfortune of going through a depopulation, and of course we fully support CFIA in its eradication program.

    In more recent history, in 1997 CFIA downgraded Manitoba's status on TB to accredited. This downgrade had no effect on our trading relationship with the U.S. From their perspective, they still viewed us as being free, and animals moved without any difficulty. In August of this year, USDA downgraded our status again to modified accredited advanced, and at that point in time this did have an impact on our trading situation with the U.S. Certain classes of cattle now require testing to go to the U.S., certification was required, and indeed animals moving from the rest of Canada required certification that they did not originate from or spend any time in Manitoba. This had a direct impact on cattle prices, primarily on heifers, and there was some price discrimination against cattle coming from that area.

Á  (1115)  

    TB affects an area of Manitoba where about 10% of our cattle herd is located and only 1% of the national cattle herd. Our management and eradication efforts are designed to try to deal with the issue in that area while safeguarding the health status and the export status of the balance of the cattle herd in Manitoba and the rest of Canada.

    The method that was chosen to deal with this was to establish a management or an eradication zone called the Riding Mountain eradication area in wildlife hunting zones 23 and 23A around the park. This was brought into play officially as of January 1 of this year through an amendment to the Health of Animals Act, allowing the creation of that zone. Starting back in November the CFIA has been doing exhaustive surveillance testing of domestic herds in that Riding Mountain eradication area. As we speak, about 95% of the cattle have been tested. There are only 40 herds left to test in the area. That testing will be completed with a target date of June 30, and in reality it'll be done long before that.

    To date we have seven herds under quarantine for suspicion of TB from this latest round of testing. Two of those herds have been confirmed as being infected and those two herds are presently being depopulated. A system of movement permits has been put in place to regulate and monitor cattle movements out of the area.

    It's important to mention, even though we have this eradication area in place, that this has not changed Manitoba's status with regard to the USDA. We are still on the modified accredited advance status and our cattle still have to be tested to move them south. USDA will probably come to Manitoba some time later this year to evaluate our efforts with regard to this zone. If it meets their zoning and regionalization criteria, the possibility exists that the balance of Manitoba may regain its TB-free status. The eradication area itself realistically faces another three to five years of ongoing testing, surveillance, and movement restrictions before it can possibly regain its TB-free designation.

    I want to take a moment and just read a little bit from my brief on the economic impact of TB, because I think it's important, and this will be reinforced by the other speakers:

TB, as a livestock disease in itself, is not a major threat to the health and productivity of the cattle herd. Because the developed countries that Canada trades with are all involved in TB eradication programs, and because Canada is so dependent on export markets for beef cattle and beef products, TB is a significant threat to the economic integrity of the cattle business in Canada.

The cattle industry in the [Riding Mountain National Park] area, in the province of Manitoba, and, indeed, in the entire country of Canada, has been placed at risk of financial loss due to the resurgence of this disease....

    Sorry?

Á  (1120)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon (Champlain, BQ): To assist the interpreter, could the witness possibly read his text more slowly?

[English]

    Dr. Allan Preston: My apologies. I have a habit of talking too fast. I'll endeavour to slow down.

Á  (1125)  

    The Chair: Try to slow it down a bit. We'd rather give you a little more time so we can understand.

    Dr. Allan Preston: I'm sorry, sir.

    The cattle industry in the Riding Mountain National Park area in the province of Manitoba, and indeed the entire country of Canada, has been placed at risk of financial loss due to the resurgence of this disease. Just to put some numbers around the situation, there are about 50,000 head of cattle in this area; 32,000 head of feeder cattle move out of that area every year and another 7,500 head of cows, calves, and bulls. Multiply those numbers by 10 for Manitoba, multiply them by 100 for Canada. Fifty-five per cent of our cattle move to the U.S. each year, some as feeders, some as breeding stock, some as live slaughter cattle, and some as beef products. Any interference with that market exerts a rather significant ripple effect on the whole beef industry.

    At the present time there are no interprovincial restrictions on cattle movement within Canada due to the TB issue. However, should such restrictions come into play, in order for the rest of the country to maintain that export access, Manitoba cattle would be discounted in value and would be subject to the added expense of testing and movement controls.

    The Riding Mountain area producers feel they are being singled out to bear the costs of TB eradication in Manitoba and indeed in Canada. They are concerned about the devaluation of their cattle, their hay crops, and their land. The area producers are seeking some form of compensation beyond that offered under the Health of Animals Act for cattle that either die or are destroyed due to disease.

    This compensation issue for losses due to animal disease is an ongoing issue. The costs due to animal disease represent a significant contingent liability to the livestock industry, to government, and to the economy in general.

    If I might digress for a second, animal disease issues as such have not been adequately addressed under the agricultural policy framework. The recently published economic impacts of a potential outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Canada indicate that only 5% of the total costs of controlling a disease are covered under the Health of Animals Act. That same balance of numbers applies to the TB situation.

    A key element in eradicating TB is the reduction of the elk herd and the reduction of the interaction between elk and cattle. Cattle producers cannot succeed in eradicating tuberculosis without a similar effort on the part of wildlife managers to manage and control the disease in elk and deer.

    As I indicated earlier, Manitoba Conservation has undertaken several initiatives to begin this process. We all recognize they're not completed yet, but the initiatives are on paper and are under way. Parks Canada has not yet indicated the same willingness to reduce the elk population, especially in areas where the tuberculosis infection rate is thought to be the highest.

    To summarize then, TB is a reportable disease, as I said before, under the Health of Animals Act, with the primary responsibility resting with CFIA. My department certainly serves a strong supporting role in dealing with diseases like tuberculosis. Wildlife management is a shared responsibility of Manitoba Conservation and Parks Canada. Cattle producers urge these agencies to deal effectively and rapidly with the TB problem in the wild herd. The true costs of the TB problem have not been determined; however, these costs do represent a significant contingent liability to the industry and to government.

    As I said before, the goal is to return Manitoba to a TB-free status as quickly as possible, and to do that we need to eradicate the disease both in the domestic and in the wild herd.

    In closing, I would like to quote from a recent letter from my minister, Rosann Wowchuk and Minister Steve Ashton of the Manitoba Conservation to the Hon. Sheila Copps, Minister of Canadian Heritage. I'll just quote one line from that letter. Referring to Parks Canada it states:

Your agency's assistance in reducing the risk of TB in the wild herd and reducing the incidence of contact between those animals and domestic livestock would be appreciated by my government and by the cattle producers of Manitoba.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Preston. Are there others at the table who wish to make just a short statement before we proceed with the questions?

    Apparently you have been given notice that you can have 10 minutes if you wish. How do you feel about that?

    Mr. Garth Routledge (Past President, Manitoba Cattle Producers Association): Mr. Chairman, yes, we all have rather distinct and individual presentations.

    The Chair: Why don't you do them now.

    Mr. Routledge.

    Mr. Garth Routledge: I'll start, and I'll try to be brief, Mr. Chairman, because I believe the questions are important.

    Mr. Chairman, thanks for the opportunity to present on this topic. After nearly 100 years of effort and investment by the Canadian taxpayers and the livestock producers of all of Canada, except for a small area of Manitoba surrounding Riding Mountain National Park, we are free from bovine tuberculosis. This was a hard-won battle. TB-free status has many impacts. It provides public health benefits, it improves the productivity of cattle operations, and it contributes to the international marketing of Canadian animals and animal products as well as protecting our free-roaming species of wildlife from infection.

    Since 1990, infected cattle herds of 1991, 1997, and 2001 were depopulated in the Riding Mountain National Park area. As a result, Manitoba lost its TB-free status. In August 2002 the USDA imposed testing requirements on all sexually intact cattle, other than slaughter cattle entering the U.S. Manitoba producers began to feel the financial impact at this time.

    It has taken a full decade to receive acknowledgement that the elk population is a reservoir of the disease. Requests by the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association to have CFIA take responsibility of eradication of the TB in the wildlife population has not been successful because Parks Canada maintains jurisdiction and the CFIA eradication policy does not apply.

    Mr. Chairman, approximately two years ago I had the opportunity to participate in a conference on the preparedness of Canada for a foot-and-mouth outbreak. It soon became apparent that the greatest challenge we had was that of how we have structured our governance. To contain and eradicate such an outbreak would require a finely tuned, coordinated response across many government departments, agencies, and industry groups. This response would be required to be effective, not within months, weeks or days, but rather hours. Anything less would expose us to the risk of financial cost to our economy of tens of billions of dollars and would decimate our livestock industries for many years. However, it was viewed that it was achievable because all the stakeholders had recognized the goal of immediate containment and eradication.

    We are now faced with another foreign animal disease, bovine tuberculosis. Once again the disease cuts across various government departments. We are all aware of the TB management plan that has been developed by the four government departments. It contains useful strategies, but it does fall short because not all departments have committed and are focused on the goal of eradication.

    Bovine TB is a foreign animal disease. In Canada we do not simply manage foreign animal diseases, we eradicate the diseases. TB has no place in our public, TB has no place in our livestock industries, and TB does not have a place in our wildlife. I now call on Parks Canada and Manitoba Conservation to declare the Riding Mountain eradication area, including the park, as a TB eradication for all species and put in place immediate action strategies to achieve that goal.

    Manitoba Cattle Producers are not lobbying for the complete removal of the park's elk herd. Indeed we have said all species because we have evidence now that this disease has escalated into the white-tail. We are proponents of an overall herd reduction along with a scientific cull of the herd where the infection rate is evident. We believe this is our best chance to reduce the incidence of an infection to the point where the disease cannot be sustained in our wildlife.

    Alberta has recently announced a plan to kill 300 wild cervids in the area around the two CWD-infected farms. Will a similar approach not be considered in Manitoba? This cull is critical in an aggressive strategy.

Á  (1130)  

    In addition to the construction of barrier fences to protect hay, improvement of the elk habitat in the park, and overall reduction of the elk numbers, all these steps are necessary for the goal of eradication. Parks Canada must take responsibility for achieving this goal. In doing so, the benefit is clear. A healthy wildlife population is a national resource.

    Mr. Chairman, I personally cannot fathom the rationale that would allow our heritage for our children and our grandchildren to include that of a diseased wildlife.

    Another vital requirement for a resolution of this issue is to support the producers within the Riding Mountain eradication area. They are the victims of a risk that they cannot control. Producers have risen to the challenge by presenting their cattle for testing, assisting in that process by securing their feed product away from the park boundaries, and by supporting the policy for herd eradication. The burden has been great for those producers.

    For the producers with infected herds, the impact is devastating. In spite of all this, the producers' primary goal still remains in finding a permanent solution.

    Putting the resources in place to conduct testing on an ongoing basis is essential. CFIA has indicated their commitment.

    Ongoing compliance by the producers with testing requirements and maintaining records of movement is necessary. Financial recognition for the producers' efforts is equally important.

    Studies of the situation in Michigan provide a picture of what can happen when aggressive steps are not immediate. State expenditures have compounded because the disease spread to areas outside of the original zone. This spread was due to a lack of resources at the initial stage. A similar scenario was witnessed in Texas. Surely we must learn from these examples.

    I had a piece here on the economic impact, but Dr. Preston's presentation covered that well. I'm going to skip that, Mr. Chairman.

    Mr. Chairman, what is at stake here is our ability and our commitment that we are demonstrating to our public, our producers, and our international trading partners.

    The Manitoba Cattle Producers Association is here to urge the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food to recommend decisive and aggressive action be taken immediately by the Government of Canada.

    Thank you.

Á  (1135)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Routledge.

    Mr. Armbruster, are you next, or is it Mr. Whitaker?

[Translation]

    Mr. John Whitaker (As Individual): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting me here. I apologize for the fact that my presentation is in English only. I speak a little French, but my accent is similar to that of John Diefenbaker, and that would be too difficult for the interpreters.

[English]

     I've been raising cattle in the TB eradication area since 1975. I spent nine years on municipal council, and my volunteer time currently goes to the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve, which is an area that roughly parallels the Riding Mountain eradication area. I will be speaking from the perspective of the cattle producers and neighbours of Riding Mountain National Park.

    We see the TB issue as mostly being within federal jurisdiction, with the province having a support role. The federal agencies are Parks Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

    The CFIA is getting mostly high marks. The testing of our herds has been intensive, but it is being done with a sensitivity to each of our operations. But the opposite is true of Parks Canada. Relations between the park and its farmer neighbours are the most antagonistic they've been in 30 years.

    This antagonism revolves around three points. First is Parks Canada's failure to admit that its elk herd is the major TB reservoir, that the elk are transmitting TB to cattle herds, and that because its elk herd is the problem, Parks Canada should admit liability and enter into discussions with producers regarding compensation for economic loss.

    The second point is Parks Canada's failure to deal with the disease in its elk herd.

    The third point is Parks Canada's failure to engage local producers in the development of a regional TB eradication strategy.

    On the first point, local people see the situation clearly and simply. Since 1991 there have been 10 cattle herds found to be infected with TB, and each of these herds has been eradicated. Wildlife testing has found 10 infected elk since 1991, in and outside the park, and it is generally agreed that wild elk are spreading the disease to cattle by infecting hay bales or by nose-to-nose contact at hay feeders during winter.

    Parks Canada should acknowledge that its elk are the cause of the problem, that TB is costing us money, and that the economic disadvantage is increasing. Parks Canada should be willing to enter into discussions with producers regarding compensation.

    On point two, regarding Parks Canada's unwillingness to deal meaningfully with its infected herd, producers again see the situation clearly and simply. We are experienced with handling disease in our cattle herds. Calf scours is probably the major disease that I have to handle. Howard can tell you more than you ever want to know about treating calf scours. The method of treatment that works best is isolation of the infection to prevent it spreading to the other calves, then hitting it hard and fast with antibiotics.

    Seventy years ago TB was common in Canadian cattle, but CFIA's strategy of testing and whole-herd eradication whenever a positive was found worked. By the time we started into cattle in the 1970s, TB was a non-issue. This technique is not being used in the park's elk herd. We know the herd is infected and that the infection is focused in the west end of the park. But even a partial elk kill in the hot zone is not up for discussion. In our view, Parks Canada is not doing its part. Our herds are being eradicated after a positive test, but its herd isn't.

    On point three, the lack of local consultation and local involvement in developing a regional control strategy, I know our superintendent was here on November 21. I noticed from the record he told you that in his view local consultation was good. This must be his own private fantasy because I really don't know how he would know. He doesn't attend any of the local meetings. He's been invisible to us on the TB issue. This has been a major frustration with local producers in that we can't talk to the superintendent and we can't work the issue up to any higher levels within Parks Canada. We've had to deal with a relatively low-ranking person--and I have nothing but empathy for this guy. He's trying to do a job that he's really not cut out to do and has received no training for. It just increases the tension.

    The TB management strategy itself was developed by four government agencies--CFIA, Parks Canada, Manitoba Conservation, and Manitoba Agriculture--without local representation or the inclusion of local knowledge in the development of the plan. It was dropped on us by the four government departments last August. Our provincial cattle organization, the MCPA, was only added after a lot of pressure, and even that was in a peripheral capacity late in the game.

Á  (1140)  

    We see TB as a regional problem. Both producers and the park have a role in controlling the elk cattle interaction that spreads the disease.

    We should be working in partnership with the park to develop a regional strategy, including getting input from the other departments and the MCPA. If we, the producers, help develop the strategy, then we buy into it.

    Why has Parks Canada been unable to deal with its neighbours on the TB issue in a cooperative and positive manner? Our contention is that this failing relates to their corporate culture.

    Parks Canada's culture is very strong. It derives from the warden service that has guarded the park over most of its history. The warden service, being essentially a police force, is very linear in its thinking and very insular in its attitudes. Neither of these past virtues equip Parks staff for dealing laterally right now with regional issues, despite the fact that their new mandate says they should be doing this.

    Riding Mountain often describes itself as an island of wilderness in a sea of agriculture, with the implication being that the island is good and the sea is bad, or that the park is good and the farmers who surround it are bad because they cut down the trees, grow crops, and raise cattle. I've even heard parks staff say that the problem with TB is not the infected elk, it is the raising of the cattle around the park; that is, it's our fault. But nothing could be further from the truth.

    Ray and I both moved here from Saskatchewan because we liked the landscape. We wanted to live and work next to a national park. In the course of making a living, we leave as much wild on our farms as we can. The more biodiversity there is outside the park, the higher the ecological integrity of the park becomes.

    I've heard countless farmers talk about the extensive natural areas that they are leaving on their farms. Cattle operations, with their natural range, high biodiversity pastures, and hay lands are more park friendly than grain farms that consist of cleared land, fence line to fence line, and grow single-species crops.

    It's time Parks Canada realized that the cattle producers who surround Riding Mountain are their friends. What local producers and Riding Mountain really need is a new way of working together for mutual benefit.

    We farmers appreciate the economic benefits of the park. All three of my kids financed their education through summer jobs at Riding Mountain. Lots of farmers have a working spouse.

    We can certainly farm in ways that are more friendly to the park mandate. Parks must realize that they also need us to achieve their goal of ecological integrity because we control the landscape just outside the park. They must learn to work with us.

    There is a local structure that can facilitate this mutually beneficial approach. It's the United Nations-designated Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve. Its area roughly corresponds to the TB management zone. Ray is a past chair and I am the current chair.

    I think my time is up. I'll leave further discussion of the biosphere reserve to questions. I think it's time to hear from someone who has been to a place that I hope I never have to go.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Whitaker.

    Now, we'll move on to Mr. Armbruster.

    Mr. Ray Armbruster (As Individual): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    First of all, I would like to thank you and the standing committee for hearing from a grassroots producer from the Rossburn area. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about my background so you can understand where I'm coming from on some of the comments I have today.

    I'm a cattle producer from Rossburn, Manitoba, and for the past 25 years we've operated a cattle ranch in the Birdtail Valley adjacent to Riding Mountain National Park. In the fall of 1997 and in early 1998 we lost our herd and some of our horses to bovine tuberculosis. For 17 years I owned and operated a family-run horseback outfitter operation that took ecotours into Riding Mountain National Park. I also chaired, as John said, the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve from 1988 to 1992.

    Currently, I'm working in a local producers' association dealing with the TB issue around the park. Most recently, because of my experience having my herd depopulated in 1997, I've also been working in a support group. At this time we're trying to help the farm families who are going through the current round of depopulations.

    The first time we came in contact with bovine tuberculosis in our area was with a herd back in 1991, a herd that was approximately four miles from where I live. That was the first indication, to my knowledge then, that there was anything wrong in the area. Through that process, of which you're all aware, that herd was depopulated. Being neighbours, we understood what they went through, and it was pretty devastating, what with the level of compensation, the lack of production after they were paid out, and the quarantines they went through. I'll speak more to that one, to my own situation.

    Also at that time, in 1991, the first elk showed up with bovine tuberculosis. It was a shot elk, a hunted elk, and it proved to be a positive case.

    Back then I was chair of the Riding Mountain Biosphere Reserve, and I'll give you a little bit of background to my comments here. I have had a special opportunity and so have a relationship with Riding Mountain National Park because I live right beside it. I've spent many a day and many an hour in all seasons of the year interacting with the natural areas of the park.

    After that first elk was found to be positive, I started to think back on my own experiences, and I started to remember the past and see how there's been a change in the makeup of the population in the wild herds in Riding Mountain. I'm not a scientist, but I've seen these as a grassroots producer, a person who has had an opportunity to see these on a day-to-day basis. I've seen the change in the makeup of the herd, where there are getting to be fewer and fewer mature bull elk. The herds' densities were coming down, and you could see that something was obviously wrong. Die-offs were much heavier than they should have been with the winter kill. It wasn't uncommon to go into the Birdtail Valley and find at times a massive number of dead animals lying around, more animals than would have died just of starvation.

    Back at that time, when I chaired the biosphere reserve, I thought it was a great opportunity to start a monitoring and surveillance program on the elk. At that time I made recommendations that park staff, along with hunters in the area at that time, retrieve samples from the park from the animals that were killed to develop an understanding of whether this disease was actually active within the wild herds.

    Also, as I become interested in it, I started looking into the background. I found out that in 1976, in the mid-seventies, we had a wolf research program going on, and it was found out at that time that there were two young wolves that had been found dead with bovine tuberculosis lesions in their intestines. The research suggested that their main source of food was elk and at times beaver in season.

    It's not hard to start drawing some conclusions that this disease just didn't spring up in 1991. Probably Riding Mountain has been a reservoir for some time. I made recommendations. I was very concerned that if it wasn't dealt with at that time, the spread of the disease might increase. I said, it's not a question of if it's going to strike, it's when it's going to strike. Lo and behold, I didn't realize that in 1997 it would be my turn. Personally, I find it's an extremely devastating situation; it basically encompasses your whole life at that time, and it takes time to get over it.

Á  (1145)  

    I'll just walk you through some of the things that happen to you. You get a phone call saying you have trace-backs to your herd: possible tuberculosis. You come in, your herd's tested, and if you have positive animals, you're quarantined. “Quarantine” means that everything stays exactly where it is on every square inch of your farm; nothing can come off it and nothing can go in it.

    After two to three months and going through the process of cultures on the TB lesions, you go through the depopulation process. That means killing the animals that are on the farm. Also at that time the whole herd of cattle was destroyed, approximately 130 head.

    We also had three horses that were removed from our string of horses. These were horses that weren't with the cattle, but they'd had fence-line contact. It's my understanding to this day that horses are basically not an issue with tuberculosis. It's very unusual for them to get the disease, yet these animals were removed. I thought at the time, it's kind of ironic that we're removing and killing a species of animal that is basically a non-issue, yet we don't want to recognize the fact that the source of the disease is a free-roaming animal, so we won't deal with the issue.

    When you depopulate, you have to deal with the issue of compensation. It's a pretty stressful situation when each and every individual of your herd comes through the chute; it's just like a bidding war, and you're trying to get every dollar you can for it. When that process is done, you come to an agreement on your settlement, and you pretty much have to take what you're offered. Then you pick up the pieces and attempt to start over.

    Our situation was in the heart of a Canadian prairie winter, and you know what that's about. You have deep frost, cold situations, and you can't begin any kind of cleanup. You probably sit in quarantine for six months, you have a little bit of compensation there, and you attempt to get back in the business. That was six or seven years ago, and it's just since the fall of last year that I've finally built my herd back to the old levels.

    The compensation at that time was terribly inadequate because it made no allowance for loss of production. In 1998 I had absolutely no production or cattle to sell. Also, there's no compensation for the cleanup.

    The impact on the family is devastating. It takes over your life. I had a son who was at one time considering getting into the family cattle operation. He had a few animals in that herd too, but they were gone. He took a major step back, and now he doesn't know if he wants to get into that.

    I had a father who was just on the point of retiring. He was put in a situation where I was paralyzed, where I couldn't even make a move to take over full responsibility and give him the opportunity to leave the farm, because of the economic impacts of what we went through.

    Mr. Chairman, again, at that time I made recommendations to the park and to Manitoba Natural Resources, and again, only at that time did we finally start to monitor wildlife. From there on we started to see a steady series of diseased elk and, in 2002, the first case in white-tailed deer. We started changing the process, so from then on, instead of looking for bovine tuberculosis in the cattle, we'd find out where bovine tuberculosis was showing up in elk. Then we'd go look at the cattle herds, and that's how the herd was found in 2001.

    It was the same for other folks in that situation; they went through the same process we did.

    At the current time, as previous speakers have said, the situation has escalated because we've come into the stage of a zone of eradication, where all cattle herds within that zone are being tested.

    As a person who sits on a support group, I've had the opportunity to go to these families who are going through the same thing, who are reliving the same situation we did. The astonishing thing through all this, through years and years, is that all the producers and all the farmers in the area realize what their responsibility in this issue is. They have been extremely cooperative, gone through the testing, and taken personal losses, some more so than others. They continually go on and on. They know their part in this issue is to return us to a TB-free status.

Á  (1150)  

    There's a cost for some producers who aren't even infected with tuberculosis. In the testing process of putting cattle through the chutes at this time of year for testing, there can be losses. Cows will abort calves. There can be injuries. There's no compensation for that issue. It's costly at this time of the year to put cattle through it. The farmers are doing it on their own time and at their own expense.

    Other areas of concern for the farmers are the loss of opportunity for sales. We have a stigma attached to us--and a very real stigma. We're in a situation where nobody really wants to have an awful lot to do with us any more.

    Raising livestock is an extremely competitive business. We've changed an awful lot of our practices on the farm to accommodate and to survive in this TB-eradication zone.

    Finally, Mr. Chair, as producers we also realize that Parks Canada has to take the responsibility in this issue. We support a scientific kill-off of elk to reduce the herd and the interaction with livestock, but also to develop a better understanding through scientific research on that kill.

    Riding Mountain National Park is part of the problem. They have to be part of the solution.

    Thank you.

Á  (1155)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Ray.

    We want to thank all of the presenters for a very telling story this morning. It's something that one can only really appreciate through experience. We thank you for your presentation.

    We're going to begin the questioning now.

    You have seven minutes, Howard.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom (Selkirk—Interlake, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    The presentation of Dr. Preston was handed out in English only. Then he read it and it was translated into French. For any reference I might make to it, it has already been translated for the people who speak French.

    I asked Sheila Copps, the minister, in the House about eradicating elk from the hot zone where the disease is most prevalent. She asked me if I expected her to go kill the elk. It's the kind of arrogant answer that I've been getting when trying to raise this issue here.

    Garth, you've been with the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association. Have you heard Mr. Lyle Vanclief, the agriculture minister, strongly fighting to have more aggressive action taken on this TB issue? Is it kind of like the CFIA is doing their job?

    Mr. Garth Routledge: At this time, no, we haven't heard a positive response from our minister.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: The point I'm making is that this government is not taking the issue seriously. That's why it's so important that you came down to give your message here today. I think I'll leave that to mostly stand for itself.

    The TB in the Grandview area is because of a cow that came up from the park area into Grandview. It is quite a way from the Riding Mountain Park. This disease is going to get transferred around. There's less likelihood now that the area has been zoned, but the elk that are diseased are also travelling around.

    Dr. Preston, do the elk travel outside the park all the way up to Duck Mountain and maybe into Saskatchewan?

    Dr. Allan Preston: Certainly, we've had anecdotal stories over the years that would support the idea that they do move. More recently we've done some radio-collaring of elk. Yes, indeed, they do move. To some extent that research is still ongoing.

    As you're well aware, at least one elk ventured out of the park back in the summertime and is now residing in Duck Mountain, quite some distance from the park.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Okay. You testified that the Province of Manitoba isn't going to get away lightly in this. The Province of Manitoba isn't very much better than Heritage Canada and the Parks Canada people. I'll explain why, Dr. Preston.

    You're the representative. This isn't criticizing you directly. It's a political issue.

    The Province of Manitoba has a responsibility for conservation and of course agriculture and agrifood. You referred in your presentation to the fact that Manitoba has initiated several actions to deal aggressively with the TB issue. The question is, what is “aggressive”?

    Later on in your presentation you say that cattle producers cannot succeed in eradicating tuberculosis, TB, without a similar effort on the part of wildlife managers to manage and control the disease. Are you managing and controlling this disease from the Province of Manitoba or do you intend to eradicate it?

  (1200)  

    Dr. Allan Preston: The stated intention, both from my minister and from Minister Ashton in Manitoba Conservation, is to eradicate the disease.

    Again, eradication in wildlife is a much more difficult task than is eradication in the domestic herd. The efforts that Manitoba Conservation have begun to put forward through the TB management strategy will lead us toward that goal, but it's a piece off.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: How many elk have been killed by hunters in 2002?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I think the number is approaching 265. It's a very small kill relative to what was anticipated.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: How many elk are in the park? Around 5,000?

    Dr. Allan Preston: Those numbers change, and my colleagues might wish to comment, but the census a year ago was in the 4,000 range. The census for this year is just being completed. I'm not sure what the numbers will show.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Given a 50% birthing rate, there'll be about 2,000 elk born this June and July in the elk herd?

    Dr. Allan Preston: If indeed the population is that high, the reproductive rate could approach that.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Yes, 50% would be a reasonable birth rate for them. It probably could be even higher. We have an expert on elk over here.

    So the problem is this word “aggressively”, and I'm saying the Province of Manitoba is not aggressive enough. They made the baiting issue even more onerous than it was before. We could never bait elk or whatever, but then they made it even more onerous.

    If you were going to be aggressive in having a high kill rate from hunters, why wouldn't the Province of Manitoba make baiting legal by putting out two or three bales in the area where the elk would come out, let every hunter fill their tags as the elk come out to those bales, and then after the hunt is over burn those bales to the ground, get rid of any disease, and never have cattle near them? What would be the matter with that? Wouldn't that be more aggressive than telling farmers they have to take their bales off the field?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I think the dilemma we face is that there are a number of different methods that are useful in trying to reduce both the elk numbers and the interaction with cattle, and at times, as you've indicated, some of those initiatives appear to be at cross purposes.

    The difficulty with the baiting and luring of animals to feed is that we would solve one issue by destroying more elk perhaps, but we may create more of a disease issue by concentrating animals in locations.

    So we have had those discussions and those wrestling matches internally in our committee as well, trying to decide which is the best method of proceeding, and I agree, there are some cross purposes there. But I think the final analysis is that removing baiting, removing luring animals out of the park, was deemed to be a pretty important step in reducing interaction, recognizing that it would not help us in reducing numbers.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: It's sure funny that the Province of Manitoba agreed to a plan that didn't entail going into the Birdtail Valley area and eradicating totally, 100%, a herd of elk that could be 100 or 200 head. Was that considered, and if it was, why wasn't that agreed to as an aggressive plan to eradicate the disease?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I'm sure you can appreciate that when you get several agencies around the table trying to negotiate a plan, the result sometimes is consensus rather than an action that any one of the agencies alone might have taken, and that's precisely the situation with regard to the measures you have outlined there.

    Certainly, from Manitoba Agriculture's perspective, going into the hot zones and removing significant populations of animals has always been our recommendation. It has always been our goal.

    Manitoba Conservation has come onside to some degree with doing that outside the park. Our dilemma was, and still is, getting the same commitment inside the park.

    Having said that, though--and Ray Armbruster can certainly comment to this effect--the idea of removing large numbers of animals in that Birdtail Valley sounds good. It probably has some scientific basis behind it, but there are some extremely significant logistical difficulties to pursuing that goal. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least have the goal on paper.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Thank you very much. We'll get to you in the next round.

    Mr. Gagnon.

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    What I'm hearing this morning brings to mind the old saying: the more things change, the more they stay the same. For instance, I listened to Ray Armbruster talk about the problems he had when he discovered his herd was infected. I'm 66 years old, and I recall that when I was a lad, the exact same problem occurred on my father's farm. We had to slaughter a herd infected with tuberculosis.

    At the same time, I have to wonder why, with all of the advances that are being made in many fields and the research that is being done, we are still grappling with this problem today and why it is still wreaking havoc on farmers. I'm curious as to the financial toll a disease like this can have nationwide over the course of one year. We tend to forget about this disease, but that should never happen until the day it has been completely eradicated.

    Just as a side bar, Mr. Chairman, I would appreciate it if in future, the witnesses are advised that they should submit their documents in French as well. I'm somewhat uncomfortable asking questions when I haven't received the documents in French. Apologies are always extended after the fact and while I'm quite willing to accept them, I fare better when I have the same information as everyone else.

    Getting back to the issue at hand, I wonder if any real effort is being made to find a solution to this problem affecting the entire country. The impression we have is that when some progress is made in one location, contamination spreads to another site. The four of you are critical of Parks Canada, among others, for apparently not doing enough to eradicate this disease. In you estimation, has a genuine plan of action been drawn up to tackle this problem? If not, shouldn't some thought be given to preparing one? I'm asking the four of you.

  (1205)  

[English]

    Mr. Garth Routledge: I'd like to initially respond, if I may. Our apologies for not having our brief translated into French, but it was late last Thursday before I was able to confirm, because of meetings, timelines, and what not, that we would actually be appearing here today. Over the weekend we just didn't have the chance to translate it. Our apologies. I hope we can do better next time.

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon: Fortunately, we have an excellent interpreter who's a fast thinker.

[English]

    Mr. Garth Routledge: I find your comments very interesting on your recollections of testing. As I indicated in our presentation, this goes back a long way. If I go back in the generations of my family, we actually had a situation where a farm was depopulated and the family lost the farm. It was tragic back in those days.

    It's unfortunate that we're in this position today. TB is a disease that at some level may appear in spots from time to time around the country, because it can lay dormant for a number of years. The unfortunate part of it in this situation is we were very slow in identifying where the reservoir was. It was only in the last year or two that we actually made that decision.

    I agree with your comments to the extent that as a cattle-producing organization, and as a cattle producer, I cannot understand the logic that separates TB, a foreign animal disease, from all other foreign animal diseases. We certainly would not have the same response to CWD. We definitely do not have the same response to foot-and-mouth. What makes TB so different that we're treating it with kid gloves? It's something we just can't comprehend, and it's an issue that is following us at every turn.

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon: In your opinion, is enough research being done to find a way to eradicate this disease? Or, is the problem not considered serious enough to invest in research?

  (1210)  

[English]

    Mr. Garth Routledge: There's no question that ongoing research is vital, and the more research we do the better it is and the more we'll understand this disease and other diseases in the future. But at some point we have to say we have enough research to take action, and that's something we have not done at this point. We do have volumes of research out there to give us, if not the perfect answer, the right direction. We have to stop researching and take action. And the time is fast approaching whereby, unfortunately, we could research this past the point of being effective.

    This disease is escalating. We do have it in the white-tail populations now. Surely we don't have to go through the same process of researching in the white-tail population and be 10 years out and again discussing this problem in the white-tail. We know from the effects in Michigan what those types of delays have done.

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon: So then, enough research is being done into this disease. What's lacking at this time is the political will to draft a comprehensive plan which would result in the ultimate eradication of this disease, or at least, bring it under control. Can the different provinces find the political will to make that happen? One way would be for them to pool their efforts. I'm thinking about the agricultural plans already in place that the different provinces find more or less acceptable. A comprehensive plan to eradicate this disease might gain wider acceptance. Is such a plan feasible at the present time?

[English]

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: Yes, I fully agree with you, Mr. Gagnon. Maybe that's part of the real problem here. We have a protocol that's been very effective within the domestic livestock for a long time, but there seems to be a real indifference in society and politically when we deal with disease within wildlife. This might be the biggest issue and the biggest hurdle politically to get over, that we deal strongly with the disease in wildlife as we do within livestock. That probably is an extremely delicate situation.

    The Chair: I'm going to allow Mr. Preston to respond. I think he had something he wanted to say to Mr. Gagnon before we conclude his remarks.

    Dr. Allan Preston: Yes, I'd like to comment briefly on two fronts. One, with regard to research, there are volumes of research that have been done. It doesn't mean there are more things that shouldn't be done. One of the most important items is researching a rapid blood test for tuberculosis rather than the three-day waiting type of test we do right now. Those sorts of things are going on, but probably the thing that is missing, as you said, is the political will to move forward with the more aggressive eradication of the disease.

    I would also like to briefly comment on the notion of the agricultural policy framework. It's a touchy point with me, as a veterinarian, that animal disease issues are only superficially mentioned in the agricultural policy framework. There are a lot of items to address in that document, of course, but we're trying to at least raise the awareness that animal disease and animal health issues are important. We now have a bit of a voice at the table to bring that topic forward.

    Whether it will fit under the business risk management pillar or under the food safety pillar, we're not sure. But certainly as provincial veterinarians and as those interested in animal health, we're trying to get that done. Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Preston.

    We'll move to our next questioner, our parliamentary secretary, Mr. Duplain, for seven minutes.

[Translation]

    Mr. Claude Duplain (Portneuf, Lib.): You maintain that enough research has been done and that now, some action is warranted. Exactly what kind of action is needed? Have you made your position known to the various levels of government? Have any concrete suggestions been put forward? If enough research has been done, what's next then?

  (1215)  

[English]

    Dr. Allan Preston: I'll comment, and I'm sure the other members will follow along.

    I really believe the ball is squarely in Parks Canada's court at this point in time. The actions that are needed to be taken are to reduce the elk population within the park boundaries. We have mechanisms in place, imperfect as they may be, to reduce the population outside the park, but at least we have the commitment for that to take place. We don't have a similar commitment inside the park, and I think that is where the responsibility rests at the moment.

    The initiatives to be taken are primarily to, first of all, reduce the population in a general term, and whether that's by 50% or whether it's to 2,500 animals, the target is a little bit elusive, but the reduction in general terms needs to be done.

    Probably more importantly, there is at least some evidence to tell us which parts of the population in which parts of the park are most affected, and a targeted reduction in those areas I think is well warranted.

[Translation]

    Mr. Claude Duplain: I am quite disturbed to hear about the fate of certain cattle farms. On the one hand, we hear that research is being done and that it's time to take action. On the other hand, when I ask you what solutions have been proposed, you say that nothing is definite yet. If I understand correctly, Parks Canada, cattle farmers, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are all involved in this issue, including the province when animals are located outside a park area.

    Are the three major stakeholders communicating clearly with one another? Have they adopted a common plan of action? If 3,000 cattle out of a herd of 4,000 are slaughtered and, of the remaining 1,000 head, 10 are diseased, what happens then? Will the disease continue to spread? What solution is truly needed? Should eradication of this disease be the ultimate goal?

    You say that research has been done and that everyone knows what to do. What's going to happen tomorrow morning then?

[English]

    The Chair: Mr. Whitaker.

    Mr. John Whitaker: In terms of your question regarding communication, Garth can speak for how good he feels communication is between the TB control group and the provincial organization, but at the local level it's terrible.

    The local producers do not feel that we are in the loop. We are not even sure if we have Parks Canada's attention on this matter yet. As I said, the absence of the superintendent from meetings, or our inability to get anyone higher up from Parks Canada to even talk to us, is seen by us to be a sign of disrespect and of non-consideration of our views and our needs.

    We feel we can contribute a lot to this disease eradication plan, because it does not only exist in the park, it is part of the whole region. It involves at least two species now, and a lot of the work that has to be done is going to occur on our land.

    We just want to be part of the discussion. That would be a good first step for us.

    The Chair: Mr. Preston.

    Dr. Allan Preston: I have a comment on the science side. Although it's a little bit shaky, the tried and true belief with regard to tuberculosis and wildlife is that with a population at a reduced level in the park, the disease will die out in that herd. I'm not going to defend or support the science, but that's what the prevailing science indicates and that's the rationale behind reducing the herd to a certain target, reducing the congregation of animals at given sites. Then the disease will disappear.

    That's why it's acceptable in the wildlife side to take that approach rather than total eradication of the herd.

  (1220)  

    The Chair: Are you finished, Mr. Duplain?

    Mr. Armbruster, do you have something to say to that?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: I'd like to make one comment on that. As producers we're not talking about wanting to totally eradicate a species of animals within the park. We want to see healthy, sustainable animals within the park.

    We support a scientific cull because more information will become available on how to deal with that. We want to see it targeted, where there can be complete scientific autopsies done on these animals to establish disease levels at different areas within the park within that species to give us information on how to deal specifically with that issue.

    The Chair: Before we go to our next questioner, Dr. Preston, the witnesses have been asking about the culls to be taken and about scientific numbers.

    What are the numbers that would satisfy the science, in your opinion, of animals taken in the park? Do you have a specific number, or are we talking about generalities?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I think the numbers are, as I said, somewhat elusive. The goal that the TB management group set was 2,500. In reality, that's probably still a little too high. I think the commonly held belief of people in the area is that we should be targeting something more in the 1,500 to 2,000 range.

    We will know probably by the end of this month what the population is at the moment. Then we'll have a better handle on where we go from there.

    The Chair: I think I'm using some of Mr. Duplain's time.

    We're dealing with a wild animal species here. Does it have anything to do with the fact that the World Wildlife Fund, or some of these groups, may perhaps be involved in allowing government to deal with this issue?

    It's much easier to deal with farmers' issues when it's a farmer issue of cattle. When you get into some of the other species, whether they're a “huntable” species or a species that are protected by some sort of national law, it becomes much more difficult.

    Are these groups casting an impression on the decisions that are made by the people who make the decisions?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I'll comment. I'm sure other people will as well.

    I think that's very true. Those organizations, the various influence groups, do indeed exert some lobbying and have some political pressure that influenced decisions.

    Having said that, though, we do have very clear examples in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other states where concentrated herd reductions of the wild herd have taken place for disease purposes. The backlash has not been nearly as significant as some people thought it would be.

    The Chair: Okay. We'll move to our next questioner.

    Mr. Proctor, you have seven minutes.

    Mr. Dick Proctor (Palliser, NDP): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Mr. Routledge, you said in your comments that the CFIA eradication program simply doesn't apply in the Riding Mountain National Park. I take it that nobody except the park authority has the responsibility to do anything within the park.

    Is that basically how it goes?

    Mr. Garth Routledge: That's our understanding, yes.

    Mr. Dick Proctor: Dr. Preston, you mentioned in your answer to Mr. Hilstrom that there was a very small kill of around 250 or less than 300.

    What was the reason for that?

    Dr. Allan Preston: The reason for the low kill this year relates to a number of factors, not the least of which was weather conditions. In spite of what we've seen in the last month, the early part of the fall and winter was a mild, easy winter. The elk were not venturing out because they had adequate food supplies in the park.

    The other factor that plays into it is that there has been some habitat rejuvenation in the park that has been relatively successful. Again, that kept the animals in the park.

    The third item that influences the reduced hunt is, again, the baiting issue or the luring issue. The amount of baiting around the park was dramatically reduced this year.

    Another factor that comes into play is that the price of hay is very high this year. Very few hay bales were left out in fields around the park.

    There are a number of reasons why the elk didn't move out to make themselves accessible to hunters.

    Mr. Dick Proctor: We've all heard the old adage that good fences make good neighbours. How important is adequate fencing here to try to separate the cattle herds from the elk?

    There's some that has gone on and more that needs to be done. Is that essentially it?

    Dr. Allan Preston: Yes. On the fencing issue, the item we've been looking at under the management plan is fencing and protecting winter feed supplies. The transmission of the organism through feedstock is a reality. If you can protect the feed supplies from the wildlife, then the feed doesn't become infected.

    I think the running total now is that about 38 fences have been put up to protect feeding sites or storage feed locations. In reality, we probably need 250 of them.

    I think that is, again, only one element of the reduction of interaction, but it's an important one.

  (1225)  

    Mr. Dick Proctor: If I heard your comments correctly, I think you said very clearly that what we needed here was a more focused approach from Ottawa. I think that was the sense, even though you didn't say it in so many words.

    Are reducing the incidence of contact between the animals and the domestic livestock and probably the greater scientific cull the two critical things at this point in time that are required?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I certainly agree with that. I believe my colleagues at the table believe that as well. If we can do this strategic cull in the areas where the disease is most prevalent, and if we can gain some information from the animals in terms of testing them when they're killed, they will be significant steps in the right direction.

    The Chair: We'll have Ms. Skelton for five minutes.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, Canadian Alliance): First of all, you had 265 elk that were harvested this fall, that were shot by hunters. Did any of them test positive for TB?

    Dr. Allan Preston: All the elk and white-tailed deer that are killed in the area are examined. To date, none of the elk have shown up as positive. In fact, there aren't any that are even showing any serious red flag, shall we say. There is one white-tailed deer, unfortunately, that falls into that category. The testing is ongoing, but it is in the suspicious range at the present time.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: You talked about 4,000 elk. How many cervids altogether are there in the park?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I believe the number of deer is listed at about 8,000. Again, estimating white-tailed deer populations is an incredibly large challenge, but I think that's the estimate.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: So you have a huge problem.

    Who pays for the cost of the fences?

    Dr. Allan Preston: The fencing costs are paid out of the budget of the TB management group. The bulk of the money--

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: The province is doing it.

    Dr. Allan Preston: That's right.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: As someone who used to have cattle on our farm, who went through TB testing at that time, and who now has an elk herd and a bison herd, I've seen what this has done to elk producers who have had to have their herds put down. I sympathize with you and your family because I know what you've gone through.

    I understand that Dr. Luterbach is your counterpart, the CFIA vet who handles western Canada. Now, you said they were very slow in recognizing where the source was. Who was slow? Was it the Province of Manitoba, the federal government, or CFIA? Who was it?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I think what happened is this. The CFIA, again, is responsible for the testing of domestic animals, including cervids and bison outside the park. They were never slow at identifying a TB problem. The piece of the puzzle that was missing, perhaps, was the surveillance of the wildlife sector to find out how much of a disease problem we had there. We began a fairly intensive look in 1997 and started finding problems in 1998. I don't think it's a matter of pointing fingers at anybody for being slow; wildlife surveillance simply did not play much of a role until 1997.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: Mr. Armbruster, you were the chair of the biosphere reserve around the area. Where did you get the first response? Who picked up on this when you went to them and said, I think we have a problem?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: Support came from the people living in the region as far as recognizing there was a problem. That's what I saw. The response at that particular time...on that committee we had Parks Canada, Manitoba Natural Resources, which is now the Department of Conservation, and the Manitoba Department of Agriculture and Food.

    At that point in time it wasn't an issue they considered serious, any of those departments, one they were willing to take a look at. Some of my proposals were very inexpensive, basically retrieving some specimens from dead animals that had already died within the park. It wasn't taken seriously, really, by any government department at that time.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: This is something I know the Government of Saskatchewan, SERM, is doing in Saskatchewan, taking heads from deer and testing them. That's how we found that CWD is in the wild. Is the Province of Manitoba doing that on all the animals that are harvested by hunting?

  (1230)  

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: That is being done. There are different numbers on the rates of compliance. I know that in discussions with Manitoba Conservation and Parks Canada they say the compliance on, say, elk might be 50% or 60% of the animals harvested, where they're actually getting a turn-in sample. For the white-tailed deer, I believe there were about 180 around the park this past hunting season, which seems significantly low, but there is a surveillance program that is gaining speed every year.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: That's just in white-tails and elk?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: Elk, yes.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: Nothing else?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: There are times when moose heads are turned in or samples of other species that happened to be killed, perhaps road-killed. There is a series of some of them sometimes, such as coyotes, wolves, and bears.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: Has it gotten to mule deer yet? Are they hunted?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: In our particular area mule deer are an extremely rare occurrence. In the last 20 years or so I've probably only seen one or two animals on a couple of occasions.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: Is it just in your area where the government is doing this testing, or is it across the whole province?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: As far as white-tailed deer go, it's kind of done in conjunction with the surveillance for chronic wasting, to see if it's invading our province, so it's basically a case of working along the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border. We're also looking for tuberculosis within that zone around the park as part of the surveillance.

    Mrs. Carol Skelton: I have great concern that these animals aren't being picked up, that you find them dead. You talked about a lot of them...and I have a huge concern that this is happening out in the wild. I know that within our own province, with the CWD, there are a lot of animals we have lost to the disease, so it worries me greatly.

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: I agree with you.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Skelton.

    Ms. Ur, you have five minutes.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, Lib.): Thank you for your presentation.

    I'm from southwestern Ontario, so this has certainly been a learning experience here for me this morning, once again hearing about this very serious situation.

    With respect to cost sharing for your compensation, Ray, how do you actually get the dollars, how sufficient are they, and who actually gives them out?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: Back in 1997, when we were depopulated, there was a top level of compensation of $1,500 per animal or, I believe, $2,000 for purebred stock. That was the top level. Now, when anyone hears there's compensation, it's always reported as being at that level, but the fact is that you never receive the top level. Each animal is evaluated at its level as of that day.

    What I mentioned before was that with your quarantines and time, you're thrown into a totally different marketplace, and you are unable to get back into the market. In most cases there's a cost and a loss of production, and also the values change. I spoke to some producers just last week, and the value that's put on, say, purebred breeding bulls is totally inadequate. What's offered falls far short...and that was the case for us also, where the compensation did not meet the replacement value.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: You have this park here. How far do the elk move from the park? How far away has the infestation been logged?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: If you're talking about the samples of elk that are turned in through hunting, most of those animals are in fairly close vicinity to the park.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: I understand CFIA is doing inspections in a 10-mile radius around the park, is it not?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: They're not really doing that. It's basically Manitoba Conservation in conjunction with Parks Canada that has provided these stations to drop off these samples. There's no designated area where these samples come from.

  (1235)  

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: I knew you were coming, and I was reading an article in a magazine. It says the CFIA announced January 1 that a TB eradication area would be established around the park. So that's not in existence yet then.

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: Yes, it is. We've been doing that since January 1. We're in a TB eradication zone, but that is exclusively for domestic stock: cattle, farmed elk, and farmed bison. They have no jurisdiction whatsoever for dealing with it within the wildlife.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: Since CFIA, as I heard this morning, is doing a rather good job outside the park, I'm asking you--and I should be telling you instead of asking you this question, but--would CFIA be a good proponent to stick inside the park then if they had that mandate?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: If Parks Canada can't get over its inability to deal with the fact that they do have a disease problem, somewhere along the line someone is going to have to. We've had the opportunity. There have been windows of opportunity for dealing with the disease for 10, 12, or 13 years, but we've missed them. The disease is spreading, and we're losing control. We could have another Michigan on our hands if it expands into the white-tails.

    It may very well have to be something...because they have the mentality, the ability, and the culture within their organization. It's their business to deal with disease and develop policy, and they've been very effective at it with domestic stock in the past. They've done a very good job, so it might be an appropriate thing to do.

    Mrs. Rose-Marie Ur: Another concern I have is about how easy it is to transmit this disease from animals to humans. Having been a health care professional in my previous life, I'm certainly concerned about this. In the same article, I was reading where the U.S. requirement for TB testing only applies to breeding stock and feeder heifers; it does not apply to finished cattle or feeder steers. That is rather scary, when the testing isn't done at that end, when no testing is done for TB, and it's going out to be sold or whatever. How do we know our meat is actually safe then?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: I have a lot of confidence in that respect, that the consumer is getting a high quality product. There's an excellent surveillance system within killing plants. I had an opportunity to sit in on autopsies on our herd of cattle because our level of infection was absolutely astronomical--over 50% of the herd was contaminated--and I can tell you that you'll never find any TB lesions within a carcass. They're usually in the animal's organs, such as the lungs and the lymph nodes. For the consumer, your chance of getting tuberculosis is almost nil.

    Dr. Allan Preston: I should probably address that just briefly.

    Human infection with bovine TB is extremely rare. Historically, it did occur in two situations: one, from the consumption of unpasteurized milk from cows that were infected, and two, from continued exposure to TB-infected animals in a confined barn or that type of thing. But again, it's very rare.

    As far as the food chain is concerned, even if there are TB-infected animals, pasteurizing milk destroys the organism. Even if an infected animal's carcass does end up in the food chain, cooking destroys the organism very, very efficiently.

    My last comment is that surveillance of the slaughter of literally millions of cattle continues on a daily basis, and if there's any indication of a problem at slaughter, those animals do not enter the food chain.

    The last thing to mention about TB in general is that it is infectious and it is contagious, but it doesn't spread very well in any species. It's a difficult disease to transmit, so as Ray said, the food supply is quite secure.

    The Chair: Mr. Gagnon, you have five minutes.

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I was gesturing because I wanted the doctor to answer Rose-Marie's question. In my opinion, it's important to know that the carcass cannot infect humans and that the disease is spread among animals.

    Owners of herds that must be slaughtered are compensated, as was the case with Mr. Ray. I believe that in the past, owners received an amount equivalent to the market value of the herd. How is compensation calculated these days?

[English]

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: The system of evaluation probably hasn't changed since 1991 or maybe 1997. The levels have changed as to the top level that can be paid out, but the method of payout is exactly the same. Each animal is evaluated for its value on that day of evaluation, and that varies from animal to animal.

    There again, as I've said, the farmers or livestock producers are in a situation where they're quarantined. They receive that value on the animal, but they're probably losing the production of that animal. For example, if it's a cow that's in calf, a pregnant cow, you will not get paid for the calf. You'll only get paid for the value of that cow as a bred cow, so there's a loss of production there that is not calculated in.

    As I said, with the quarantines many producers wait six months and sometimes longer before being able to get back into the business, so they're thrown into a totally different market.

  (1240)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon: Mr. Chairman, I can tell you about one case in particular where the market value of one herd was assessed at $300,000. However, the owner received only $22,000 in compensation. All that was taken into consideration for the purposes of calculating compensation was the value of the meat, not the herd value from a reproductive standpoint. How could that happen?

    French is a beautiful language, but it does take a little longer...

[English]

    The Chair: Mr. Armbruster, I think he wants you to be specific. He wants to know what an average animal is worth in terms of--

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: If you want the present value, those animals are evaluated at a dollar level, and there again, it's on an individual basis. Some animals might be worth $1,000, some of them $1,500, and some of them $1,700, okay?

    The big issue with the compensation is that while it's good for that day, you can't turn around and go buy that same animal or a comparable animal back because you have no home to bring it to. You're stuck with that fixed price, what you get in compensation. Later you'll go back into the marketplace, one with different market values, and you'll have lost the production opportunity in the value of that animal. That is what the missing component in compensation is.

    The Chair: With Mr. Gagnon's permission, I want to ask you this question. What relevance does taxation have in terms of deferral of taxes on that money to the following year? For instance, if this took place in October and you weren't able to buy in until next March...has this or has it not been an issue?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: That is a concern for any of the people who go through it. You're basically given just the same amount as anyone selling off their herd in drought would get. Then you're given a two-year window to reinvest and work through the taxation system.

    The Chair: That's the answer I wanted.

    Go ahead, Mr. Gagnon.

[Translation]

    Mr. Marcel Gagnon: If a farmer finds that one of the animals purchased happens to be infected, can he assign responsibility for the problem to the vendor or to the body that issued the permit for transporting the animals, for instance?

[English]

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: If I understand correctly, you're asking about a situation where someone buys an animal that is infected. It has happened on occasion where there has been a transmission of disease through the sale of an animal that's gone to another herd. The owner is compensated through the CFIA the same way the original producer is, but from the point of view of holding someone responsible, I don't think there's been a precedent set for that.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    I'm going to go now to Mr. Anderson if he wants in.

    Mr. David Anderson (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Canadian Alliance): Thank you.

    It's clear that we have a problem. Parks Canada was here at the committee a couple of months ago, and they really still don't accept that there's a problem or that they bear any responsibility for it. Thank you for coming today, and hopefully this will shed some light on the matter and encourage people to see things in a different way.

    I had a couple of questions, and one of them is about the CFIA. You seem to be reasonably happy with the way they're working now, but over the last couple of years we have thought they have been really slow and unprepared in dealing with these things when they first come up. Foot-and-mouth was an issue, and we talked about it here for a couple of months before CFIA seemed to have any ability to respond. Chronic wasting disease was another one where I'd suggest they were very slow off the mark, although they've responded lately. On this one they seem to be slow as well, and there's no or very little provision in the APF to deal with these issues.

    I'm just wondering, do you have some advice and recommendations for CFIA for dealing with these issues in the future, given what you know about what's going on with your...? I'm thinking about the initial phases of realizing there's a disease and reacting to it. Does anyone want to answer? Some of the guys on the ground have more sense than the people who are a long way from it.

    The Chair: Mr. Whitaker.

  (1245)  

    Mr. John Whitaker: It's almost something new, this whole question of transmission of disease from wildlife to domestic livestock, and it's probably new for CFIA as well. It certainly is new for us producers. This didn't used to happen. If your cattle got TB, they got it from a cow who came from another domestic herd. But there are a whole bunch of other diseases out there. We've mentioned chronic wasting, foot-and-mouth has been mentioned, and who knows what else is coming?

    It's becoming more and more difficult to raise cattle in contact with wildlife, yet Ray and I want to do that; we like to have wildlife on our farms. When I look at CFIA or the regulator of this, we're going to have to be more vigilant and we're probably going to have to be prepared to act faster than we've been prepared to act in the past.

    It always looks good to go back and say in hindsight, gosh, we knew in 1991 that we had a TB problem coming from the elk. But if you were on the ground at the time, of course you didn't know that--unless you had Ray's experience, because Ray has seen things from a perspective none of the rest of us has had. That would be my only reaction with respect to CFIA, that they're going to have to be prepared to act faster, probably based on less information, and perhaps be prepared to be wrong the odd time in the interests of maintaining the health of the herds.

    Dr. Allan Preston: I'm certainly not going to criticize the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. They've done an admirable job on this issue, as they have on most others. We do have to recognize that they're a regulatory agency.

    One of the things that has transpired over the last couple of years was triggered primarily by the foot and mouth disease outbreak. It gave us a wake-up call and made us realize we had some flaws in our system, so something referred to as the Canadian Animal Health Coalition was created.

    The coalition is an organization that brings together CFIA, the federal government, provinces, industry, commodity groups, and processors all the way down the line to look at the whole issue of animal health and animal disease management. We're trying to re-establish a slightly different way of animal health governance in this country. We're looking at trying to exert some influence at the policy level to indicate how animal health should be managed. Those are things CFIA can't do on their own, so we're trying to do that as a group.

    One of the things that's come out of that discussion group is a rather large document called the “Canadian Animal Health Emergency Management (CAHEM) Strategy”. We have put together a document, a bit of a road map, to help us make sure we don't repeat the mistakes that were made in Great Britain and the mistakes that may have been made here with tuberculosis. So those process are ongoing, not separate from CFIA but in cooperation with them.

    Mr. David Anderson: How do you deal with agencies such as Parks Canada that do not have the same view of the situation or accept the same solutions? It's good to set a coalition together, but that's a coalition of people who are like-minded. The further we go with things--it looks to me like the nature conservancies are going to be setting up a lot of these trust areas--the more we're going to have this ongoing problem.

    I'm a producer and have been one for a long time, but agriculture is losing its voice. We need to form these coalitions and make sure we're aggressive and very outspoken in representing our concerns.

    The Chair: Mr. Armbruster.

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: I've seen exactly what you're talking about--the movement of nature conservancy, CEPA, developing corridors, and wanting an expanded wildlife movement. It seems to me we have a society that's demanding more and more wild spaces, more and more wild animals for them to enjoy. That's where we need leadership from Parks Canada and maybe the Manitoba Conservation Districts Association.

    But there also has to be education involved there. Those groups have to realize there's responsibility for that. We want to promote healthy wildlife in those areas. We cannot just write blank cheques. We're going to have wildlife areas, we're going to turn them loose, and we're not going to take any responsibility. There's no monitoring or management. It's unacceptable. We're going to head for a complete disaster within the livestock sector, and of course wildlife. We have to manage it to be healthy wildlife.

  (1250)  

    The Chair: Thanks, Mr. Anderson. Your time is up. I have to move on.

    Mr. Maloney is next, please, for five minutes. We're at the end of our time.

    Mr. John Maloney (Erie—Lincoln, Lib.): A mention was made this morning that wolves found in the park had lesions on their organs. Perhaps this is a question for a veterinarian. Is it unusual that something other than perhaps a bovine would contract this disease? Is there a concern that our natural predators will also pick it up, there will be fewer of them, and the herds will perhaps expand with this disease?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I'm not sure what the cause of death was in those wolves, but I think TB was found as an incidental lesion in an animal that was trapped, shot, or whatever. It's not unusual for predators to pick up bovine tuberculosis from eating an infected carcass.

    The normal route of infection in cattle and elk is through inhalation of the organisms. The wolf picked it up by eating the infected carcass. That doesn't cause TB in the usual sense; it simply colonizes the lymph nodes in the intestinal tract, and the lesions show up when the animal is examined post-mortem. So I don't think there's an influence there on it cutting down on the number of predators.

    Mr. John Maloney: We've heard about measures for protecting the herd, such as fencing and taking the hay off the field and storing it so natural elk can't get at it. Are there any other measures that farmers should be taking? Is there someone coordinating this?

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: Some of those things farmers have started doing on their own. I certainly started changing my practices. There was an area where I wintered my cattle where I had basically nose-to-nose contact with wildlife. After 1997 I abandoned those places and moved to a new location in an area I thought might be better.

    I have an elk fence now for hay storage, and it's going to prevent wildlife from getting into the hay samples. The only issue there is we probably need one more step, because if they travel within nose distance of smelling the feed, they'll probably go from not getting into the hay right to feeding with the cows, which is going to be much worse than eating at the bales.

    So it's an ongoing issue and we're going to have to continually work at more and more steps. We're going to certainly need support and financial help from all levels of government on that issue.

    Mr. John Maloney: The border is not yet closed to our beef from this area. Are live steers sent south, and if they are, how is the inspection done? I'm sure they must inspect every animal that goes through. Where is this done? Is the meat that goes south processed in Canada and then sent as carcasses?

    Dr. Allan Preston: There are a couple of ways to answer that question, but certainly live steers going south out of Manitoba are not required to be tested at this point in time. Even a feeder steer moving from Manitoba to a feed yard in Colorado does not require a test. Our status still allows those animals to move without a test. Once those animals go through the feeding process and are slaughtered, then they're inspected at slaughter.

    By the same token, if we send fat cattle south from Manitoba to a kill plant in South Dakota or in Iowa, again, there's no test required because we know very well that those animals will be thoroughly inspected on the kill floor. That's the means by which any possible cases are picked up.

    Mr. John Maloney: Is there a concern then that the border could be closed if there was a prevalence of disease detected, let's say, on the kill floor?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I think the information we have right now would not indicate the border would be closed; it's just that as more and more TB cases are found, the level of restrictions on animals moving to the U.S. escalates. At the present time, as I said, those steers go without a test. If we drop another notch, those same steers will require a TB test in order to go to the U.S., and that becomes a significant cost.

    Slaughter cattle are exempt from tests regardless of what our status is because they're examined on the kill floor. But there's a very real possibility we may move to having to test steer calves that move to the U.S.

    Mr. John Maloney: We have estimates of the number of elk in the park, namely 3,000 to 4,000 and perhaps more in the spring. Do we have any handle on the percentage of how many may be infected? Is there any way of detecting this at this time?

    Dr. Allan Preston: The science we have, as has been discussed, is based on an imprecise sampling technique, but the science we have would tell us that the incidence of TB in the Riding Mountain National Park elk herd is in general around 1% or maybe a little bit below that. If you look at the data and dissect it by areas of the park, the incidence of infection in the Birdtail Valley in the western third is probably at least 5% and maybe 8%.

  (1255)  

    Mr. John Maloney: In the Birdtail Valley there were logistical problems of getting in there to cull the herd or whatever. What was the reason? Was it just the terrain?

    Dr. Allan Preston: I'll ask Ray to speak to that. He knows the area much better.

    Mr. Ray Armbruster: If there was a cull actually initiated, there would be some logistical problems. It wouldn't simply be a case of marching someone in there and shooting these animals. It would have to be done strategically, probably with an aircraft spotting and probably with the shooting done from a helicopter. It could be done, but it wouldn't be an easy task, that's for sure.

    The Chair: Mr. Hilstrom may ask a short question, and then I have a comment to make to the committee before we adjourn.

    Mr. Howard Hilstrom: Thank you.

    We have been talking about the cost and the international repercussions of this. On my own ranch I have as many as 30 or 40 elk I can count in my alfalfa fields at any one time, and we're not near the park. This disease is a scary situation.

    Now, my question is for Allan and Garth because of your province and of course the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association. When the cattlemen's association was down at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association convention in Tennessee this year, in one of the committees that deals with Canada-United States issues the American committee members raised concerns about the prevalence of tuberculosis in wildlife in Riding Mountain National Park.

    So what your presentations are trying to do is convince Minister Copps, the Prime Minister, and the agriculture minister that this is really serious and that it really has to have some hard action taken. I'd like your comments in that regard, as to the seriousness of this. We know that Ontario dairy cattle have tuberculosis; they did a trace-back on that recently. We know that Wood Buffalo National Park has tuberculosis.

    Dr. Preston, is that enough for you to give some comments back on the seriousness of this to the cattle industry across Canada? We're not just talking about the 50,000 head around Riding Mountain National Park.

    Dr. Allan Preston: There's no question the disease has serious trade ramifications for us. The reality is that USDA is being lobbied and will continue to be lobbied by cattle producers in the U.S. to extend the downgrading of TB status to the whole country, not just to Manitoba and not just to the Riding Mountain eradication area. If indeed that happens, then there'll be a significant cost for testing and moving animals south. So it's a very large issue.

    As I said before, the disease itself is not a threat to the productivity by herd, but the trade effect is very significant. Again, that's the message we're trying to deliver. We have a serious problem we are attempting to address, but it needs a little more push to get it addressed thoroughly.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Preston.

    If I were to ask you or the panel just one short question about what is most important, I think the question Mr. Hilstrom raised would be the one. It's something I would like you to tell us. We realize the sensitivity of this issue, how time-sensitive it is, and the urgency for us to respond to your issues. What might you be able to tell us we ought to be doing very quickly to respond to your concerns here this morning?

    Mr. Routledge.

    Mr. Garth Routledge: My first response, Mr. Chairman, is to ask you and your committee to recommend, as we said in our brief, very immediate and comprehensive strategies to the whole of the Government of Canada but specifically to those departments that have the most ability to make a significant change, in particular Parks Canada right now.

    The Chair: Dr. Preston.

    Dr. Allan Preston: I just have one very quick comment. We've had excellent cooperation from the producers in the Riding Mountain eradication area. To continue to have their cooperation we at least need direction from the federal government that action will be taken inside the park. Whether the action takes place tomorrow or the next day is not quite as critical as saying it will be taken, and that will restore the faith of the producers in the area that we are moving on the issue.

·  (1300)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    Mr. Whitaker, Dr. Preston, Mr. Routledge, and Mr. Armbruster, I appreciate your coming and appearing this morning. I realize the time notice was very, very short. You had a very short time window to get your briefs ready to present. As was mentioned this morning, we need them done in both languages, but given the timeframe, that just wasn't possible.

    Thank you again for meeting with us, and we look forward to responding to the concerns you expressed this morning.

    Before we leave, committee members, those who are still here, on February 13, which is this Thursday, we will not be meeting with the Departments of Agriculture and Foreign Affairs, given that these people are out of the country at this time. We are still meeting with the dairy industry over this WTO issue. We will have enough work to do having these people coming before the committee, but we feel that it's important that both these other people also make presentations. We're looking forward to meeting them on March 18.

    Thank you again. Bon voyage.

    The meeting is adjourned.