I've talked to one of the individuals you've quoted--Mr. Littlejohn--and he is not enamoured of the quotes you're expressing. He made them, but he's not so sure any more, and he certainly doesn't like being quoted in the propaganda campaign that you guys think this program is any good.
But the first point I would make, Mr. Chair, is that the parliamentary secretary went on at great length that the money is triggered when there's a need. Yes, that's true. However, the money is utilized when the rules are established that the money can in fact be triggered. And the rules haven't been changed to allow the beef and hog industry to utilize business risk management in the last couple of years.
I just don't know where the members opposite have been. There are somewhere around 3,000 beef producers out of 4,400 in Ontario who don't qualify, Mr. Chair, because they don't meet the viability test. The safety net program is useless to them because they can't trigger the money. That's prevalent right across the country. They've had two years of negative margins, so they no longer qualify.
As witnesses before us expressed a week ago, that's easily changed if the government would come to its senses and make some changes. It's not in violation of the WTO, so it could assist the industry in many respects.
On AgriStability, Mr. Chair, the judgment is certainly out, as I've said at this committee a number of times, and by this time next year we'll know. I think the members opposite will be quite disappointed when they find out that they've been had by someone in the senior bureaucracy, in that AgriStability won't even pay out as well as CAIS did. It's going to be a sad day for members opposite, I know, but it's the reality of the world, and some of the producers whose cheques have rolled out are already indicating that.
On the parliamentary secretary's point on a per head payment, that could have worked. It has been done in the past. The previous Liberal government had I think 11 programs for the beef industry during the BSE crisis. I believe three of them were per head payments of various kinds, with no challenges from the Americans. For one of the programs, I will admit there was a problem in which the packing industry managed to, in my view, basically steal $550 million right out producers' pockets, in the way the program ran. But keep this in mind, Mr. Chair: when Parliament moved on a motion on those companies after we had studied them extensively, we didn't get unanimous consent in the House. Why? Because the current Minister of Agriculture voted against that committee recommendation in the House. He didn't want to take on the big companies at the end of the line. That was why we didn't get to where we wanted to.
I guess the last point I would make is—