First of all, it's a policy within the Canadian Cattlemen's Association that we believe in free and open markets. The NFU policy of restricting supply by closing borders and talking strictly domestically would, we believe, be very restrictive to producers. It would mean that almost half the producers would have to go out of business. We don't see it as sustainable.
As far as income is concerned, yes, we definitely have challenges for the Canadian beef producer. One of the ways of addressing it is, as I said, to make the CAIS program much more responsive to the smaller income that tends to go to the beef industry right now, to shore up some of the discrepancies within price. COOL is one program that has substantially reduced the price of cattle in western Canada. We can alleviate the situation by getting over some of the hurdles COOL has put before us, so that we can get competitive bidding from the American packing plants.
We do believe some live animals have to go south to keep the marketplace true and alive. We do not want to process all the cattle inside Canada. We need as many bidders in the marketplace as possible. We support the concept of the American meat-packing plants being up here buying cattle. Of course, if they're going to bid on the market, they have to be successful in buying some quantity.
So that's what keeps our marketplace vibrant and alive here.