Certainly there are already programs in Quebec for winter losses or crop insurance, but the federal government's share is really not huge, and I fundamentally believe that the federal government has to provide support for crop insurance and winter losses, because those losses are huge. A $1.5 million loss is tough and it creates a difficult situation.
Ms. Lamothe Boudreau asked me a little while ago whether we had would still have started our business back up if we had not had insurance. We would have been bankrupt with $1.5 million in losses, on top of lost income. Obviously we really needed support.
I would like to come back a bit to the question of importing packages of bees. We are not opposed to that, but we need to pay attention to the genetics we are developing, so as not to have Africanized cross-fertilizing with our queens. That is why Ms. Lamothe Boudreau said we had to have a closed area to be able to fertilize our queens.
We are not opposed to importing packages of bees, but we really have to pay attention to what we are importing. For example, this year, we are not able to get queens from Pope Canyon Queens in California because an Africanized gene was found.