Thank you very much.
I hardly know where to begin, because I'd like to address a whole series of questions to any one of you particularly.
As a hog farmer from Ontario, let me assure our hog producer here this morning that I share the frustration and concern you have with the industry, going forward.
Let me begin by setting a premise as to where I see agriculture going in the future. Some of us around this table—Mr. Thompson, and the three of us on this side—came in 1993, and we've been at this table for a long time. We keep hearing the same issues; we've heard them now for at least 14 years. In my former life, I heard them for the previous 25 years, so we really haven't gone very far in terms of progress. Perhaps we might have intermittent progress from time to time, but the long-term progress is really pretty insignificant.
I'm going to throw this on the table as I've done in other meetings, and I'm going to do it again this morning. I am wondering whether it's time we started looking at where the programs should be developed and where they should be funded from.
My view is that we are competing with provinces. We are competing between provinces and the federal government on every occasion that we have program development. We keep blaming one another, and farmers seem to be the victims in all cases. I think it's time we started looking and thinking forward as to whether it's time to make one department of agriculture at the federal level. That doesn't mean there won't be provincial involvement in terms of the research and all those things, because demographically and geographically we are somewhat different from province to province, but we have so many instances in which we are competing, and ultimately we are the losers.
I think of what happened with the BSE issue and how we came to the rescue of the beef industry, whether adequately or inadequately; nevertheless, we had the beef producers here in the previous hour and a half and we found that we have the capacity now. We helped build that capacity. Now we're selling into a marketplace and filling about 70% of that capacity. Why? It's because the almighty dollar has chased our cattle south of the border, the live animals; the slaughtering is not being done here. Though I agree with you in terms of cooperatives and farmer-owned initiatives whereby farmers become involved in seeing value added into their industry, I really wonder whether there is enough commitment in any sector of our farming community today where you would see a continuum of support, given that a dollar is going to drive things in another direction. I think the beef issue is a good example of what's happened.
I think we have to start taking some very serious consideration to what we're doing. Darcy, I know you spoke to the issue of grains. Grains and oilseeds have been in a quandary for a good many years, and certainly over the last four or five years. NISA hasn't worked properly; we know basically the opportunities that present themselves there. You talked about the NISA program being a rich man's game, and it is: if you haven't got any money, you can't get into it; if you have money, you don't need the program. We had another program recently brought forward that basically was an exit program from agriculture. These are all band-aid programs, and I think we need to have a policy.
I know my time is expiring and I haven't even got a question. I could speak for a long time on this issue because I'm passionate about it. I believe we have spun our wheels; we've left a lot of rubber on the road, but we haven't got anything to show for it. As an industry we must move forward and make some very tough decisions, including us as politicians making those decisions, because if food security isn't important in this country, then we'll never have farm programs. Once we adopt the theory, the policy, and the principle that food security is, among all things, the most important thing in this country—equal to our military security—and believe that, then we will find and devise and design programs that will accommodate that kind of thing.
I'm going to leave it at that. Those are some of my comments, but you could pick up on anything I've said. I have a lot of questions, but I can't even get into that.