Mr. Speaker, the sheep producers are on Parliament Hill.
They are demonstrating against the arrogant attitude of the Liberal government, which has only mediocre solutions to offer.
While the Minister of Agriculture claims to be concerned about the financial and emotional burden of producers, his government limits its support to a compensatory measure penalizing all the sheep producers who complied from the start with the orders from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Today, the producers are demonstrating outside the House of Commons to send a cry for help, to ask the government to save the Quebec sheep industry. The Minister of Agriculture is very clearly showing that he is completely out of touch with the dramatic situation experienced by our sheep producers.
The problem for Quebec sheep producers is not scrapie, but the slaughter ordered by the federal government, with no real basis to justify that decision.