I have a different view of the current situation.
For many years in Quebec we have been exploring the option of assisting producers on a cost-of-production basis. For many years we have been telling the Canadian government that it is asking Canadian producers to compete with governments in other countries. I can compete any day with a producer from the U.S. or another country, but not with other governments, not with a farm bill that is as generous as the one that has been around for the past 15 years.
Today, we are here before you because producers have done what they could with what they had. They have dug into their equity. There is no equity left on the farm. We have tried to compete with the U.S. government. As long as the Canadian government fails to establish a genuine agricultural policy that helps producers as much as the policies of other governments do, the industry will not be able to make it through these crises. As long as the Canadian government asks producers to do what it is now asking them to do, things will be extremely difficult. This is why we come before you again and again to tell you that producers are at the end of their rope. They cannot go any further. They have done the best they could.
Moreover, we are in the midst of managing major, unprecedented crises in both the beef and the pork industries.