Thank you.
We've created an APF and we've created different pillars, and the idea I think was to nest it all together and to have it fairly comprehensive. But we didn't do that; we just simply didn't end up doing that. So we started to come in the back door and do some things in budgets subsequent to the initial one.
When we talk about the CITI or the CAIS inventory transition initiative, and should it go to Newfoundland and Labrador because they're located out in the far reaches of the Atlantic and we should take pity on them, or should we send it to the people who it's targeting, the people who got hit with BSE and the grains and oilseeds issues and so on, I don't think there's any question that the ones who are targeted should be the main beneficiary of that. But with $900 million there's some rationale here to say that if we don't build in some kind of a program, an offset from this program, to allow Newfoundland and Labrador farmers to build their infrastructure around slaughterhouses and meat inspections and so on, to do that kind of thing, they're going to be back here three years from now and they're going to be looking for the very same program themselves. We've got lots of second chances, but we have no first chances. So I don't think it's a leap to be able to say we can rationalize this, other than by virtue of the fact that we're living out in the cold Atlantic.
Again, when we look at this disjointment of fillers, I think Newfoundland and Labrador did something with a little bit of money that it had that no other province managed to do, and it was built into the flexibility thing that we always talk about.
BRM was not our major preoccupation in Newfoundland and Labrador over the last two or three years. As a matter of fact, we did not come anywhere close to being able to use up all the BRM allocation that was given to us, but we were given the flexibility to move that money to other areas and to other pillars, and primarily we moved that money into areas where we could do strategic development.
We came in the back door, if you will, to do strategic development. We've had a lot of people who said, we can't let Newfoundland and Labrador do that in the future; shut them down. I say let every other province do the same thing. Give them the flexibility to do it.
One of the real key things we did...because the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, who have oodles of money, said, here's the lead government agency coming in putting up $100,000, $150,000, we will come in with $500,000 on a $1 million project. We had INTRD, another program that's not related at all to agriculture, and is not a lead agency, say, look, we're in too.
So we would have a conglomeration of about five different agencies coming in on the basis of a small percent of leverage that's brought in through APF, but without that flexibility we can't do it. I think you can call that companion, if you want, but there are all different kinds of things to do.
I'll could go on for a long time, but I'll just leave it at that.