Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister. I will have to admit that I do disagree with a lot of the rhetoric in your comments, because the reality on the farm is far different from the rhetoric you outlined in your comments.
In beginning—and there will be questions to you on that later—I would just say one thing on Ms. Weatherill, the listeriosis investigator. Certainly we disagree strenuously with your view on Ms. Weatherill. First of all, contrary to what you said, Canadian confidence has dropped in terms of food safety in this country. If you look at what's happening in the United States and with President Obama, they are clearly making that a big issue and want to get to the bottom of the problems in the food safety system. But we have an investigator who has no authority to call witnesses, no authority to subpoena documents, no authority to investigate either your office or the PMO's involvement, and the reporting process is such that there's no public report but a report to the Minister of Agriculture, which is you, sir, which we hold in some respect responsible for the mess we have in the food safety system, and you can decide on your own whether parts of that report are made public or not. So on that point we respectfully disagree.
In terms of the farm sector, you said you believe you're getting the job done. If, on the farm side, allowing farmers to go broke and out of business is getting the job done, we don't consider that a success.
The reality of the numbers is cruel. Agriculture Canada's own figures show that over the last five years, not including 2008, 3,600 farmers per year went out of business—each and every year over five years. Last weekend, when the big numbers were coming out, 129,000 jobs lost in this country, the highest proportion of jobs lost in any industry in Canada was in agriculture. Proportionately, 9.6% of the jobs lost were in agriculture. That compares to 7.4% in manufacturing.
The stimulus package that the government put forward has very little stimulus for agriculture. In the budget, you talked about $500 million for AgriFlex. We know that's really only $190 million, so you broke the promise you gave during the election, of $500 million. There's only $190 million of new money. I believe you did mention in your remarks that the old cost of production program is done away with, and that $400 million. That's interesting. That's the first we knew of it.
On this $500 million that in fact doesn't go to the farm safety net programs in Ontario and Quebec, this $310 million reallocated, can you list with this committee today the programs that you're cutting?