Thanks. That's a good question.
The National Farmers Union is a pro-export organization. We understand that we need to export our products to be able to make a good living. What we mean by overdependence is that we have placed ourselves in a situation where we are now almost entirely dependent on--or at least too much--on the American market, and we've lost opportunities around the world by doing some of the things that we do here that keep us captured in the North American market. We're losing some of the most lucrative markets in the world due to hormones, BSE testing, and other things like that.
We just think we need to move forward on those kinds of things so that we can capture those kinds of export markets, but we also can't put all of our eggs in one basket. While we've been chasing and trying to get export markets, we've lost a lot of our own markets, and we think we need to balance that a little bit more and put some focus on regaining and recapturing our own markets.
Canadians love Canadian beef. As bad as BSE was, it could have been worse--as hard as that is to imagine--if Canadians hadn't been so supportive, through their mouths and stomachs, of the Canadian cattle industry. They know this is good-quality product, done to the best health standards in the world, and yet we're losing our own markets to offshore competition, among others.
We've placed all of our eggs in this export basket. We've seen, on one of the graphs there, that we've actually lost on income for our farmers. So we export and export and it's not coming back. What we're suggesting is just rejigging that balance a little bit. We're not saying we should get rid of exports or that we won't primarily be exporters. We're just saying that we need to make sure we have our own ducks in order in our own country and that we're getting our own markets--a high-value market that has a lot of money in it--to make sure it's returning to farmers. Then let's go out and try to get every market around the world we can. Right now we're blocking ourselves from marketed opportunities because of the way we've addressed some of the issues in our own beef system here in Canada. We think we need to go that route as well.