I'm not going to address each one of you, but I'm going to do it collectively, because we're looking at APF and how we can move forward.
We're working in an environment where we're talking to the world community. There are impacts on our industries, whether it be the canola growers or the bison or it might be the pork industry, which I'm in. There are so many outside forces that impact and we're trying to work programs, to accommodate those programs, and the standards are set by someone else other than someone in this country. It could be the Americans. It could be the European Community.
We're talking about supply management, and there are those who don't like it within our own community and we fight each other at the world trade talks. These are not beneficial. Those kinds of ongoing discussions are negative to the cause that we've put forward.
I think as a country we have to start addressing where we're at. We're in an agricultural community. We have to stress the importance, and if we really believe that food production is important, if food security is important to this country, then we ought to, because those outside forces.... We are the great boy scouts. We follow all the health standards. We follow all the rules that are set by world trading communities. We've never really gone short on that. We put out the best and the safest products in the world, but we don't have big returns.
As a recent manuscript that we put out from our party, “Rural Canada: Sharing the Wealth Beyond Tomorrow”, says, there's lots of wealth in agriculture, but it's not going to the primary producer. We need to share that wealth, not just today, but beyond tomorrow. I think we're not really focusing on that.
I think we have too much government. I think we have provinces fighting provinces, the feds fighting provinces. I think if we had one federal department and said listen, we're going to find a way.... If we're going to have these encumbrances thrown in our way, then we're going to have to as a government, along with the producers, be able to find ways in which we develop programs to accommodate those circumstances, but do it at a national level. They don't have 50 farm plans in the U.S. They have one farm plan.
We are fighting each other. I've been at this table three times across this country. I'm hearing the same things, and in fact some of the same people; some have less hair than they had 14 years ago, but other than that the story's the same. I think we have to start looking at, as Dr. Phil would say, is it working? Probably not. Well, then, let's fix it. Let's do something different.
If you want to comment on that.... I know this is pretty broad, but we have to start looking outside the box. We still haven't crawled outside our little cubicle.