Well, thank you.
When we initially asked for the $30, which amounted to $800 million, as you're very well aware, we lobbied government and opposition members on it, but it became clear very quickly that we weren't getting any support from any members, whether opposition or government. Also, in our discussions with the Americans, it was very clear that there was going to be an immediate launching of a countervailing action, which ultimately would have meant that the $30 a hog would have probably just been transferred straight from the government taxpayers' coffers into the American taxpayers' coffers. That ultimately was not acceptable to any of us. It wasn't acceptable to opposition, and it wasn't acceptable to government. We also understood that just transferring money to the U.S. maybe wasn't in our best interest either.
We therefore took another look at it, and that's when we came up with a system whereby we could at least get the APP loan paid down as well as getting access to another APP under the emergency situation. That's what we had asked for. The government came up with something different. Initially $1 billion was going to be available to hog producers. Unfortunately--and I'm going to be a little bit critical here, certainly of the banks and maybe to a certain degree of our government as well--they negotiated that down so significantly that now there may only be as little as $620 million available to our producers. That is quite disturbing to us. And the APP comes out of that, so in actual fact, the $312 million that comes out in APP money is replaced, and then if it's only $620 million in total--you are right--it is not enough, and it isn't going to do the job that it needs to do. But the banks negotiated down. They pushed hard, and they got it.
Now the question is, as I stated in my initial presentation, whether or not we're even going to be eligible to get these funds. We've been hearing that banks aren't that excited about lending this money to any of the producers. This started only last week with the FCC, on Thursday. I actually put my application in on Monday because I wanted to find out first-hand whether it even worked. I was told some things. I've been talking to other producers who are being told different stories. That is concerning. We need to ensure that this program works. If it doesn't, it needs to be fixed.
As far as the interest rate goes, we were promised by the minister that we would not be penalized for being hog producers. If we are, we'll be coming back to address that issue.
You're absolutely right, we cannot afford to be penalized 3%, 4%, or 5% because we're hog farmers in trouble.