Thank you very much.
I appreciate your comments. It is difficult to sit here, because no one wants to air the dirty laundry of their home front for everybody to see. It is not masked behind policy; it's real, and we live it every day. So thank you very much. I appreciate that from the heart.
It's not that the government has not come up with programs or CPC hasn't worked hard on programs. It's not that I think the $5 million AgriFlex initiative isn't worth it. The problem is that in Atlantic Canada we're not big enough producers for this program to work for us. It may benefit farms that have larger sow numbers and production—I'm not sure of the number—but we're too small. That's the problem.
We had a 500-sow operation and were one of the bigger operations in Prince Edward Island. We've gone down to 350. I've already decreased; I'm already efficient enough. What I need is the APP program to be reinstated for those in severe economic hardship, not standard cases. If I get APP, I don't have to get a first priority agreement with the bank even I were participating in the HILLRP program. For the HILLRP program, $85 a hog for a small producer isn't enough. If I were a larger producer and had $1 million and paid my $400 APP off.... I've had $600 to do three years of paying my mortgage, doing my expenses, and what not over those three years. But I can't do that: it wipes me out. It wipes my genetics out. I think that's a big loss to Canadians and to the Canadian hog industry to have my genetics gone, in my opinion.
I think in respect to Jurgen, I'm tired of the Americans holding a stick over us. Guess what: their stick has turned into a cane. They're at war. They're bullying us. We're tired of being bullied. They never want countervail, and I'm tired of hiding behind what I've heard my whole life--that we can't dump money into the feed program because we're scared of a countervailing duty. We need to decrease our costs.
Then, to decrease my COP, as we heard from Mr. Cooper, we need some subsidy for our feeds. And if we don't have subsidies for our feeds, which keep people employed and all the things Mr. Cooper referred to, then we have to have money—taxpayers' dollars—to subsidize us so we can break even.
It's frustrating, because I see the quality of our meat, I see how hard we work, I see our production, and yet we're being asked to slaughter that production for three years. If you guys lost your job today, could you pay your mortgage for three years? Could you feed your family? No, I can't do it.
Under the current program for Atlantic Canada, and specifically for my farm, I can't do it. If I do that program, I exit; I'm done. I will lose my restaurant, because of my personal guarantee. I will lose the home I've had since we were 23. We worked so hard. I got educated. I will lose everything—everything. This program, I beg you, doesn't work for Atlantic Canadian hog farmers. It doesn't work for me. I'm not saying it's a bad program or that it was negotiated poorly, but it just doesn't work for my farm.