Thank you, Chair, and gentlemen.
I guess I'm just going to say that I'm a little concerned. I think this motion is very premature to bring forward until we've had a real chance to explore what exactly is going to happen here.
I actually asked some of the guys back in my riding last week what they thought of giving $31.70 a head to the packers. The first thing they came back to us with was, “You're going to give money to packing plants?”
Keep in mind that there's been $50 million available for slaughtering capacity to make improvements and gain efficiencies in dealing with SRMs and other things in their plants. We've done that for them. I think the last thing we want to do is take a company like Cargill, for example, and give them an extra $8 million, $10 million, $15 million. That's who will get the money.
I know Mr. Easter said the farmers need it, but the reality is that this doesn't go to the farmers. This money will actually end up in the packing plants. It'll end up being utilized for their efficiencies or needs. It will not get passed on to farmers. I think the history has shown, in BSE, that programs like this that we think will funnel through the packing plants to farmers just did not happen or did not work. I can't see anything that has structurally changed in that scenario that would make me believe this would happen in this case.
The other thing I'm curious about is that they were asking for 30 months, I understand, for the $31.70. What then, after 30 months? There has been no proposal, there has been no suggestion saying that after the 30 months we'll be at point Y or Z, and then we can deal with the market as the market delivers its results. I have that question.
Then we also have to talk about countervailability. Does it shut off markets? We haven't explored that. Is there actually a problem here, possibly, that if we do this, all of a sudden we have more markets shut down on us, which creates that domino effect that makes it harder and harder on our producers?
My goal is to help farmers, just like everybody else around this committee table. I believe everybody here is looking after their farmers, and that's what they want. I understand the industry and their ask, because they're trying to figure out a quick way to get results for farmers, but I think we actually have to go back and talk to some of our farmers a little bit more and find out exactly how we can best do that.
Actually, is the SRM side of this an issue that farmers really think is a...? Well, I think they think it's an issue. I think they recognize it's an issue, I won't say that. But how does the funding flow?
The other thing we need to look at as a government is if we have the proper regulations in place. Do we have the proper procedures in place for dealing with SRMs? Maybe we have to tweak that a little bit more too.
Mr. Bellavance, I can't support it because of that, because I think it's premature. I want to see any benefits actually get down to the farmers, and I just don't see that happening in this case. So I think we should take a step back and see if there's a better way of doing this that actually gets the results we want to see.