Thank you, honourable member, for the question. I'll maybe ask my colleague from AAFC to add perspective as well.
I think if people reflect back, those with some longer history would recall that the 1997 feed ban was not an exercise in simplicity in itself. Reference has been made to the desire at that time, because of market integration, to move in synch with the United States; again, it's important to point out that even though there were comparable feed bans, the Canadian and U.S. feed bans have not been identical since 1997. In fact, the Canadian feed ban in 1997 was more stringent than the U.S. feed ban, and the U.S. made exemptions for products that we felt would have problems in cross-contamination.
I share with you the reality, as you say, that this has been a three-year process. I think there have been clear signals on all sides, reinforced by objective third parties, as to where we felt we should go and what should be achieved. Certainly the balance has been the desire for reintegration of the North American market and not to create an economic disadvantage that could not be overcome with other benefits. That is against the backdrop of industry also saying that diversification of markets in the long term is the best strategy for Canada and that we should not put ourselves into the circumstance of being dependent on a single market in the long term.
All those factors have played, I believe, in the background of people hoping that we could move in parallel with the United States. In fairness, the United States did announce in 2005 a proposed interim rule for enhancements to their feed ban; to this point in time, they have not moved to finalization.
One can speculate as to what plays in that scenario. I believe the recent announcements and determinations of Canada and the United States in terms of their categorization internationally will bring refocus to that issue. I don't preclude that there won't be adjustments made on the U.S. side at some point in the future.
As has been indicated by all the goodwill around this table, the work of the provinces, the complexity of the file, and the jurisdictional issues around environmental management, the desire to ensure that we had an implementable feed ban was very important. We saw the failures of other countries that responded to findings of BSE, and findings of BSE after their initial feed bans and the introduction of measures that on paper would have stopped the problem, but in reality industry did not give support, others did not support, and it just exacerbated the problem even further.
I think part of it is wanting to ensure that we have done all that was feasible to have an implementable, environmentally sustainable, collaborative feed ban that all the players could support, so that at the end of the day it would be an effective feed ban. That has been very critical, I believe, in how the rest of the world has seen it.
That would be my perspective, honourable member.
Susan, would you like to speak on the funding side of it?