Right. Thanks, Jim.
And so came BSE. We had to then protect our herd against it. In order to qualify for our controlled risk status so we could maintain the current markets we have, and all the work the people in this room did to get our markets--the ones we have--it was part of our protocol that was written to the OIE. And we did that.
We expected at that time that the United States would have to come with us. Little did we know, they didn't. And they won't. But we're hooked into this for the next five years, and that's where the disadvantage comes from. Now I can't fill my kill.
We were also asked in this country—the Honourable Scott Brison can relate to this one—to increase our capacity while the borders were closed. We did that. We have enough capacity now to process 100,000 animals a week in this country. We're running at about 60,000.
It's a fickle business. When you're losing money, you can offset your losses with capacity. We're unable to do that in this country today, and I think you've seen some rationalization happening in the west in the last two months simply because of it. It's made the packing industry a real challenge again. We're turning over every stone, and we need all the help we can get from this room.
As I was saying, we would bring cows up from Vermont or out of the eastern seaboard of the United States to fill our kill out. We're unable to do that now because we're at a disadvantage of $30 to $40 a head because of our SRM program not being equivalent to that of the United States.
At the time it appeared it was the right thing for this country to do. We rely on trade. We export 60% of our production in beef in this country. We rely on all the necessities, the tools we can build into that to maintain our trade.
We're now into trade with the United States, which is our major competitor. That's who we earmark ourselves against, because that's what our consumers accept. It has really put us behind the eight ball with that difference of the rule. It's that major an impact. It's between $30 and $40 on every head.
We can supply this room with that detail before you go to Washington, if you so desire. But I come back to equivalency being so important with our number one trading partner.
I'll move on.
We also appreciate that in the province of Quebec we have one of the best traceability systems. We have a two-tier system in Canada. We have the ATQ and the CCIA.The ATQ has been audited, as well as CCIA, and they're both world leaders. The ATQ has maybe one up, because it has gone into all livestock species. I'm going to leave that one for Linda.
The other one is that I hope we don't get back to the par dollar. We survived it once, but in the manufacturing sector in our country, a par dollar is really difficult. It makes it a real challenge because of our infrastructure. At 25¢ cents, it's good; at 20¢ to 25¢ we can see it, but if you start getting it close to par.... We survived it once, but I'd sweat through the second one, believe me.
I'm going to leave it to questions, because it sounds as though we'll have lots, Mr. Chair. I'll share my time with Linda.