Good morning. Thank you for giving us your evidence. I was not present at the beginning of the trip to the west. One of my colleagues. Mr. Gaudet, represented the Bloc Québécois. Since the start of the trip to the east, we have once more just touched on rather than examined the question of animal health. Mr. McKillop, your presentation gave us an idea of the importance that the problems of animal health should be given.
In the present Agricultural Policy Framework, animal health is not dealt with. In your opinion, what policy should the government adopt in this area? What policy instruments should it put in place so that very specific objectives can be met? There have been major disasters, such as BSE and a pandemic that affected poultry in British Columbia. Even the province of our chair, Mr. Bezan, was affected.
When I was first named agriculture critic, we visited Manitoba to find out for ourselves about the bovine tuberculosis problem. We went into the field, and I like that. I feel that in a sense we are in the field at the moment, since we came to visit you. But in that case, we really went to the home of a farmer whose entire herd had had to be destroyed because of bovine tuberculosis.
It was interesting to see everything that had been done to improve the situation, but it was very touching and difficult for us as decision-makers to be so close to that kind of situation and those kinds of sights. We felt a little powerless. There was no disaster relief program at the time, but we hear about them today. Perhaps that is one of the positive sides of the problems that we have gone through.
Before I finish, I would like to talk about something that is very dear to me, regionalizing health zones. For example, when a problem affecting poultry appeared in the United States -- I think it was in Arkansas -- a very precise zone really was drawn so that there was no trade with Arkansas, but trade could go on elsewhere in the United States. My intention here is certainly not to target a province, because we must show solidarity with people living through disasters like that, but when we had our BSE crisis, the whole of Canada, from east to west, was penalized. As the Bloc Québécois has always advocated, we should perhaps have regionalized our zones to prevent the country as a whole being penalized. I went a long way around to get to that question, but I felt that it was important to mention those facts. You opened up a topic that interests me.
Mr. McKillop, Mr. Stewart, I would like to hear your comments on the matter.