Thank you very much, lady and gentlemen, for appearing this afternoon.
As we were listening I was looking around, and I think I'm the only one who was here in 1997. Carol, I don't know whether you were here then. You were somewhere else, perhaps, at that time.
I'm on my second or third round of listening to these kinds of issues. In 1997 we had a crisis in the hog industry. It rather quickly turned around in the spring of 1998, but that is not likely to happen in the hog industry. My own operation is in the hog business, and I quite understand. On the beef industry side, of course, we were here during the 1993 crisis and came through that. We are somewhat being told now that this crisis is even greater than the one in 2003.
We've been given a lot of ideas today, but ultimately, if we do a lending program in the short term, with the parties responsible for repayment, if this crisis goes on—and you have projected probably out 18 months in the short term; if this goes beyond that, even if it goes only 18 months, where is the wherewithal going to come from in the industry? These people are already burdened with huge debt. Since 1997 there's been a huge growth in the hog industry, and in the cattle industry to some degree but not to the same degree. Where are these people going to come up with the money to repay these loans? Sooner or later people are going to walk.
We should have taken lessons a long time ago...and I've been an advocate for supply management, as you all know. If we can't factor in cost of production.... We constantly seem to want to be putting the onus back onto the grain growers, who are now receiving a disproportionate amount of the farm-gate dollar, although we're not saying that, and we don't want to blame those people--and we shouldn't. I don't think we should have cheap pork because we have cheap grain. We should have high grain prices. We should have high meat prices.
I'm sympathetic, but I'm wondering, we went with the SRM notion that we had to be better than the Americans, or we had to be better than anyone else in the world, but who else recognizes that? Who is rewarding us for that? Was the beef industry involved in that decision-making, or was it simply a decision made by government and through the agencies we have looking after that?
I'm frustrated, because we built an industry from 70,000 animals to 100,000. Now we're back at 60,000. Why is it being boxed back into Canada?
I have no answers for you, but I'm asking if we should not be producing a product based on cost of production, and therefore allowing those who produce the grains, produce the inputs...because lowering interest rates or taking command of other factors that are somewhat out of our control is not the answer.
This is a rambling dissertation, but I want you people to respond to some of the concerns. We're all, around this table, frustrated to the same degree.