Thank you, Clare.
To carry on, then, to answer the second question—how we think the government has responded to our requests and to this very severe situation—I can tell you that we are pretty disappointed at this point by the response from the government. Clare indicated that the major problem is liquidity in our industry and the fact that this downturn is much more severe than a normal downturn because of the ethanol and corn issue and because of the Canadian dollar and just the normal price swings in hogs. This has been a much more severe downturn.
We've indicated that some of the current programs, while we think they're good programs.... Clare talked about some of the changes we would like to see to those programs. They're underlying good programs, but they're not capable of dealing with a situation that is this bad. We've made clear from the very start that we need something over and above what we have.
In my case, it's so disheartening. At the end of every month you look at the numbers and the tremendous amount of equity that's flowing out, and there are limits to how long producers can do this. In fact, we know that right at this point we've lost something like 15% of our production in Alberta, 10% to 15% of our production in Ontario; in Manitoba we hear stories that something approaching 10% of production is gone or is in the process of going. We're at the point now that sows are going to market so fast, producers are getting prices such as $10 a sow. They're backing up in the stockyards. The normal channels just can't handle the volume of sows going to market.
I don't have to tell you guys that aside from the economic activity we're losing, these are farm families who are losing their livelihoods. There are employees who have worked on these farms who have to go looking for something else to do. This is a devastating situation, and we all know that. That's why we've asked for something to deal with the liquidity.
What have we heard from government? Certainly, right from the very start they have been saying that we need to deal with the existing programs: “Let's do what we can with existing programs.” I can tell you, we don't think that's enough.
We've asked from the very start for some kind of loan program that would deal with the liquidity issue, with the idea that we know there are better times ahead. We've been through this before, and you know that, as bad as times are now, they'll be better in the future. We see that happening now. Futures markets, far out, are moving up every day. So we know there are better times ahead. If there are that many sows going to market, and it's happening all over the world, then there's going to be a shortage of hogs in the future.
We're really concerned that in the response from the government there have been press releases talking about the loan program and indicating that there's the APP program, whereby there would be money available to producers. We've had calls from producers who have had false hopes, saying this is great, and then we have to explain, “No, that's the APP program, and it doesn't really work for us.” I'm going to tell you in a second why that is.
The APP program, as you know, is a loan program for producers. It doesn't work for us because it's tied to CAIS. Producers get an APP loan; two weeks later they receive their TAP cheque, and it goes to pay off the APP loan. Not only that, the bank will have already reduced their operating line, because the security is tied up.
So I think we're calling on you people to try to help move this. If it's an idea that can help producers, it takes changes to regulations, and I think we need to talk about it.
There are other ideas that have been put forward, things like the sow reduction program or an interest reduction program. We can talk about that as well.
I'm out of time for now, James, but I think you heard the issues. Something needs to be done and it needs to be done soon. We're talking about February 1 being Black Friday. We have many producers who are on COD who just aren't going to be able to carry on, and something needs to be done. And it needs to be either done or announced in the next ten days.