I'll start off with your tirade on the Wheat Board to begin with. When you analyze it, 62% of the farmers in western Canada supported some change, some sort of open market attitude at the Wheat Board. The Wheat Board itself has come to that idea, too, that it's going to have to change, because it's losing market share.
If we had that same plebiscite today, Mr. Easter, I'm sure it would be in the 75% to 80% range, judging by the calls I get from the affected farmers in my area.
Moving on to the livestock sector, we've had very productive talks with the sector, with the provincial governments. As to an exact date, no, I cannot give you that. We have assured the sectors that there will be announcements before Christmas that will allow them to start to move ahead to work with that.
I have had discussions with the chartered banks, with Farm Credit Corporation, and no one is foreclosing at this point on any particular sector. There are certainly case-by-case issues that have been ongoing longer than just this latest glitch in the market.
The dollar is down. Interest rates are down. A combination of their portions of the $600 million that will be available in early January and the targeted cash advances are what has been on the table at this point, that have had agreement between my department and the provincial departments.
I do have ongoing discussions with the provinces coming up tomorrow afternoon, and we'll have to wait and see what comes out of those discussions. I cannot commit to anything at this point, until we have those discussions with the affected provinces as well.