Mr. Speaker, I beg to differ with the hon. member for Frontenac. The dairy farmers of Quebec and all of the supply managed sectors in Quebec know the value of supply management. If the translation was correct, he indicated that they did not realize the value or they did not know. However, in his previous comments he said that they did.
Forty-eight per cent of industrial milk production in Canada is held by producers in Quebec, not 48 per cent of the total production. There is a lot of fluid milk or consumer milk but the industrial milk is that milk which goes for cheese and further processing. That is held in Quebec.
I have said for a number of years and I will continue to say that even though there has been some tariffication used as border controls rather than a quantitative control, I am very confident that supply management will be there for those sectors for a long period of time.
I question the member's statement of the value of quota. If the member looks at what has happened to the value of quota, he will find with very few exceptions that its value in the last number of months or since the GATT agreement of about a year ago has not increased. I do not believe it has decreased, but if it has it has been a very marginal amount. That happens over the years because of production et cetera. It will go up and down.
It is solid and it can be maintained. The government has shown very clearly in working with the all the stakeholders in the industry over the last number of months that it is our intention to maintain it for the betterment of all Canadians right from the farmer to the consumer.