It's so political. When you say that people aren't speaking up...my cow-calf producer friends are so tired of phoning our local agriculture minister's office. Unless you can really speak off the cuff, they just put you down and they put you off, because they're there to further their political agenda and they don't want to hear from us. They don't want to hear that AgriStability doesn't work and they don't want to hear that AgriRecovery...nothing was done for us.
The biggest problem is that the cow-calf producer traditionally never really asked for anything. We've survived our ups and downs, but with BSE so many years in a row and then a year like this.... Right now, in 2010, in Saskatchewan and in the disaster areas and in the wet pockets of the disaster areas, it's a matter of treating your animals humanely. It's very serious. Animals have to eat every day, 365 days. I don't like to pit the grain farmer against the cattle producer, and so many times that's what happens. I still use this phrase: you can put your dead grain in the bin and then you can go off and negotiate with the banker, you can negotiate with politicians, but cow-calf producers have to deal with those animals every day, and we have to deal with them very well.