Mr. Speaker, I was very interested in hearing the speaking notes from the Prime Minister's Office that the parliamentary secretary just read out.
It is interesting to note that having a federal Conservative government in Ottawa and a provincial Conservative government in Alberta led to record low farm receipts. Alberta farmers now have the lowest farm receipts per capita in the country, so we can imagine what is going to happen in Saskatchewan now that it has a right wing government provincially as well as federally.
I was also very interested in the member's comments about urban members of Parliament. Who is the Conservative member in charge of the trade file in agriculture? It is the member of Parliament for Vancouver Kingsway, who not only represents an urban riding but has not been seen in two years because he betrayed his constituents.
We have a caviar swilling, cognac sucking, urban intellectual who has not been seen for two years in his riding now in charge of determining what positions are taken at the WTO and what positions are taken in bilaterals. That explains why there has been no response by the WTO to the new agricultural modalities and it also explains why livestock producers have not been consulted on any of the bilaterals.
I have a couple of questions for the parliamentary secretary. First, why did the government not support loan guarantees for livestock producers? Second, when pork producers have been calling for more international support for product promotion, why did they get a measly $1.2 million last year for an industry that is worth $2.5 billion?