Your stories remind me of our farm. We had a beef operation and we used to do our own killing and retail hamburger. The bottom line is that we were driven out by inspections and things like that.
I think what's really amazing is that 12 hours ago our committee just finished a report on listeriosis. One of the findings is that there were not enough inspectors. Here you have a situation where the big corporate killing plants do not have enough inspectors. In your case, there are too many inspectors visiting your place, pretty well running you out of business. It just doesn't make sense.
What most consumers want is local safe product. Local is number one; safe, of course, is number two. The bureaucrats have a problem here too. A lot of times they're doing the regulations, and they're sitting in their ivory towers coming up with things they think are right and then turning around and trying to implement them with no real understanding of what it's going to cost the butcher.
Does the system need to be turned upside-down a bit, where you should have the ministers of agriculture, federally and provincially, sitting in a room discussing where we are going and what we are really doing? Are we really servicing, number one, the consumers to their best interests? Are we really servicing the local chambers of commerce and small butcher shops? Or are we on some sort of trip here that's totally out of reality? Maybe some of these ministers get into these portfolios—and they change these ministers every couple of years—and the bureaucrats are already on this spin cycle, and they have no chance of changing some of the programs.
Would you suggest there has to be an overall reality check to look at what's happening in the whole inspection system, especially when you've got both federal and provincial systems going down the track? Does there have to be an investigation or reality check on where we're going with this?