Madam Chair, I do appreciate the speech from the hon. member. In having some comments directed at him, he sort of opened himself up to that question in respect of wanting to talk about some of the good things in agriculture. We have heard a little bit of what I would say are inaccuracies in some of the comments that have been made.
I would ask the hon. member about a couple of things. First of all, he mentioned the $1 billion we put into agriculture. I know that if he had had an opportunity he would have mentioned that in the budget we put in money to expand the spring and fall advance programs and we gave the Canadian Grain Commission some additional resources.
I know he would want to mention that slaughter capacity has actually increased by 30% in Canada, that we have two new plants coming on line, the benefits of the loan loss reserve program, that we have put investments in the P.E.I. plant, and that we have other plants that have expanded.
I think he would want to mention that we have been able to regain access to 14 new international markets. Certainly even today the fact is that we have concentrated on the appeal to the ruling in the U.S. in the California court. Canada's standing at that court was accepted by the court today. That is something we have done. I think that is a positive side.
I think it is important that we do have a fulsome display of the facts on the public record here and that we do understand what was done in the budget, what additional support was provided after the budget and the progress we are making. That is not for a moment to suggest that there are no other important issues to deal with. Obviously supply management is one, as is our WTO negotiations.
The hon. member indicated the importance of talking about some of the positives in agriculture. Would he agree that some of these I have mentioned are positives? Perhaps he has some others that he would want to enunciate.