I do not have an answer for that. The EU subsidizes wheat on average by $116 a tonne or $3.15 a bushel. The United States is subsidizing at a rate of $72 a tonne or $1.95 a bushel while Canada is subsidizing at a rate of $15 a tonne or 40 cents a bushel and Australia is subsidizing at rate of $13 a tonne or 35 cents a bushel. There is the problem.
The United States says it is the free trader of the world and wants to do away with subsidies. As far as I am concerned that is bovine fertilizer. We need what we are working toward right now, a national disaster program that would kick in and give support to farmers when the current safety net systems are not sufficient.
As a farmer I have taken a lot of phone calls from farmers in my area. I have been talking to guys who lived through the crisis with me in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is not just the opposition that gets these phone calls. Members on this side get the phone calls too and we are acutely aware of what is going on out there.
I have spoken repeatedly on this issue over the past six weeks in national caucus. I have talked not only with the Prime Minister but with all cabinet ministers present at national caucus each Wednesday. They are all acutely aware of what is happening. We have to make sure as a government that in saving our farmers whatever we do and however we do it, and we will be doing that, it must be GATT green so that it does not trigger a countervail.
When I produced pigs back in the late 1970s to the mid-1980s countervails were absolute death to our industry because they would tie up production. I have been watching production in our country. We have looked at international trade and we have moved production in pork from $16 million a year to $19 million a year. That means we had better be exporting three million pigs or the floor will be blown out of the market. That is what is happening.