Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I came in late and probably missed some of this.
In the economics of it, it seems that for every producer, when he ships his animal to market, there is a liability because somewhere along the line there will be environmental costs to the producer. We've never been able to get much recognition of the fact that maybe every animal should be tested, or every carcass tested, for BSE after slaughter. It would have cost about $20 or $25 an animal. We've pursued this business about the big worry we have, and the Americans apparently now will have about $100 an animal advantage to our Canadian producers.
It's a bit of a mystery, Mr. Chair, why we pursued this route.
But the other thing that bothers me is this. Are we inventing the wheel? What do the Europeans do? What do the British do with their...? What do the Australians do? We know the Americans are apparently going to do nothing. So the economic question, in the long run, is if I were producing cattle, which I am, I'd rather ship them into Maine to be slaughtered than to send them up to Quebec because the animal will be worth more money at an American slaughterhouse than it would in a Canadian one.
So we have a really major problem, Mr. Chair, and I don't know what the solution is. But I can't help but be a bit frustrated, because the department consistently insisted that the testing of carcasses was never a door to be opened, yet the CFIA are saying now we have at least an $80 million problem for the federal government, probably a bigger problem for the provincial governments, and that's the road we're on. Will this road last forever, or is it something for the next five years?
Maybe, Dr. Evans, you or someone could try to answer some of my frustrations with the road we've followed. It's like Frost--the road you take.