Thank you, Mr. Easter.
I'll start with AgriStability. The federal government does not operate arbitrarily. As you well know, it's a jurisdiction shared between the federal government and the provinces and territories, so changes to AgriStability I do not make arbitrarily. We just had a meeting of the FPT, the federal-provincial-territorial ministers, roughly a month ago in Toronto. We have expressed a willingness to re-crunch the numbers and work forward towards our annual meeting coming up in Saskatchewan in early July. We will have a look at some things at that time.
What we've done on the HILLRP program is extend the deadline by some three weeks. We have extended the liability of the federal government from 70% to 90%. There are still roughly two weeks to go until the deadline is up. We're hopeful that this will drive more producers to actually make an application.
It's a little bit of a misnomer to say that it's only 3% of pork producers. That's if you take 3% of 8,000, certainly, but not everyone has come in to make an application. I have statistics from Farm Credit Canada showing that 75% of the applications they've received have been successful in going out with a loan.
When you talk about paying back the federal government first, yes, that's the way it was set up, but then it also created the opportunity for that very same hog producer to apply for and receive another--a new--cash advance, so it's just basically a flip-over. Under Treasury Board guidelines, you know you can only go so far. What we did was ask them to repay what they had out, and then they were eligible for the same type of money again. That's the necessary situation that was created there.
Certainly we're concerned about the domestic market. There's no doubt about it. That's why we brought forward “Product of Canada” labelling to make sure people had a better idea of what they were buying on our store shelves. That program is working quite well for those who want to make use of it. When we brought the program out, we said that we would assess it to see the efficacy of the program. That process is going on right now. We have a timeline, and I think it's the end of April, for us to have all of the submissions in from industry processors across the country as to what's working for them, what's not, and what we need to do to make sure that it is in their best interests, so we are adapting and addressing.
Certainly you recognize the point that our major trading partner, the U.S., is in the worst shape of any country in the world because of this global recession. They have far less money to spend than they ever did before. There are hamburgers rather than steaks going on the barbecue. Country-of-origin labelling, as you well know, we have challenged under the WTO, and we continue to push forward on that. I know I have another call lined up with my counterpart, the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, tomorrow afternoon. We're constantly in their face and in their thoughts with our presentations on that panel. We are starting to exchange documents on it. The panel has been struck, and we're moving forward on it.
There are a number of balls in the air, and of course we don't intend to let any of them drop.