Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.
We should indeed be learning significant lessons from the BSE crisis. The first one is that such a problem should never again be addressed as a single Canada-wide problem. Any problem in the future should be “regionalized” as early as possible, and the regions affected identified clearly.
Had this procedure been followed for the BSE crisis, Quebec would have been spared, because it already had a tracking system in place, which clearly indicated that our cattle were disease-free. Unfortunately, the federal government's decision to treat all producers the same across Canada caused major problems, particularly to dairy producers.
The federal compensation package is unsatisfactory. It covers the replacement of only some 16% of the herd, as compared with an acceptable 25%. There has therefore been no compensation for the rest.
We must also look at another reality: beef prices are dropping for producers, while they remain unchanged at the consumer end of the chain. In between, meat packers took advantage of the crisis to make maximum, extravagant profits beyond what is acceptable.
The government must react quickly and offer much more than what is currently on the table to ensure that satisfactory compensation is provided for cull cows and butcher cattle. In the very short term, there is risk that people who have acted in good faith and managed to develop quality farms, family farms in many cases, but now find themselves on the verge of bankruptcy and of being choked will have to get out of the market and the industry. All it would take now is for interest rates to rise slightly for the crisis to deepen.
I agree with my colleague that the federal government's current measures are unsatisfactory and that we have to learn from this to prevent the same situation from happening in the future. It was just one sick cow that led to a ban on our beef throughout the world. We know full well that the current U.S. position is not based on science, but on politics. The environmental and health obstacles are basically a new form of protectionism.
We have to learn from this. First of all, the producers need help as soon as possible. Throughout rural Quebec this is a major issue that has an impact not just on individual farms but on regional economies as well. These people are not buying as much farm equipment and they are investing less, which has an economic impact on our regions.
Let us hope that the federal government will use its surplus to improve its contributions as soon as possible.
The first measure that could be addressed is the following. If there had been an independent employment insurance fund for the past several years, there would indeed have been more money for doing something other than paying down the debt. The federal government would have had to use these billions of dollars based on the needs of its various areas of activity, but that was not the case.
Let us hope that with the Conservative amendments on the table and the Bloc Quebecois amendment to the amendment, we will have a Speech from the Throne that better reflects the direction Quebeckers and Canadians want this government to take. Parliament has a wonderful opportunity to set out guidelines for the government and demand that it act the way voters want it to.