Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Easter already alluded to the three initiatives the minister could be doing, and it's false, he didn't come through with those initiatives, so we know the failure there.
What also bothers me are the negotiations with Korea. We're still buying their cars, and they're not buying our beef products. I don't know why we're not being a little more heavy-handed with them. If they're buying U.S. beef, there's not much difference between a steer produced in Alberta or a steer produced in North Dakota, so I don't know why we're not pushing harder on that file.
You alluded to the fact that most of the problems cattlemen are having are weather-related. That's totally false, especially on the east coast. Our cattlemen back on the east coast are just not getting enough for their product.
I was talking to the new president of CFA yesterday, Mr. Pellerin, I think, from Quebec. He had 500 animals and he's going down to between 50 and 100. There's just no money there, and the graph will show you. When you look at the return in the last six or seven years, it says here the steer price as a percentage of retail price the farmer gets went from 24% down to 16%; that's a one-third drop from what they're getting on the retail shelf. When farmers send their cattle to the market, they see the price they get and then they go to the grocery store and prices are going up, so that's the reality of it. That's why they're going out of business.
I don't know how you can allude to the fact that it's weather-related. I'm really concerned about your organization lobbying for the cattlemen. Why are you not pushing these guys a little harder on how come they're not delivering, and why are you not standing up for the farmers when you're dealing with the processors and the retailers?