Actually, the drought occurred at the beginning of the season. In Abitibi, we're used to having more water, and at the start of the season, we had no water at all. We thought it would rain at some point, but there was no rain. We had to use the hay we were harvesting to feed the pasture animals. In the end, we still had to buy quite a lot of it. We managed to find some in Témiscamingue. What we needed was money to buy hay during the summer, during the harvest, because we knew that everyone in the region, everyone in Abitibi, needed to buy hay. At that point, we did pressure the Financière agricole du Québec to try to get advance payments, but there was a long wait. We received the first payment in August. When you know that everyone wants hay, you have to act quickly.
As for the decrease in our herd, we had 350 cows; we sold about 50 of them to make it through the winter with the forage stocks we had and managed to secure. However, that's catching up with us now, because we have 50 fewer calves to sell, which is another loss of income. We haven't received much compensation. At the same time, selling off the herd means that today we have even less income.
I hope that answers your question, Mr. Gourde.