I have two more points, Mr. Chair.
We've had the hog and beef industry before this committee, as I said, and they expressed a real concern. The beef industry came together—and it's not a big amount of money—to get some assurance and bring some stability to the industry. They asked for something as simple as $31.70 a head for OTM cattle, an SRM disposal compensation program, at a cost of only $24 million. The Conservative members rejected it. That would have given some assurance to people coming into the beef industry that the government cares, but the government, of course, rejected that out of hand.
The biggest area on beef and hogs--and we raised it with the hog producers when they were here--was that a number of things could be done that would not affect us in terms of the WTO and trade issues; that is, eliminating the viability test. In fact, that nearly $1 billion that's in the safety net programs could have been used and paid out to producers without affecting us on a trade basis. We could have used the better of the Olympic average or the previous three-year average for reference margin calculations. The beef and hog industry support that, but the government continues to reject it.
Mr. Chair, if the government had moved in a couple of areas and used the money that's available in the Agriculture and Agri-Food documents, it would have helped the industry and perhaps given some security and a better foundation for people to come into this industry.
The last point I would make, Mr. Chair, also goes to what the Conservative members on this committee rejected. That was the proposal from the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers. They talked about the security measures in place in the United States.