Mr. Chair, the member across the way raised the question of finding new markets. He was bragging about his government's efforts in Russia, China and most recently Japan in order to discover new markets for Canadian beef. That is generally good in the long, long term, but let us acknowledge the reality here.
Canadian beef is not going to go to Russia or Japan or anywhere else outside of North America unless it is in a box. Until such time as we can kill the cattle and pack the stuff, it is a red herring to say that we are solving the problem by looking for new markets in far-off lands. Our number one objective needs to be the continuation of providing killing capacity here at home, because right now there is a domestic demand that our cattle producers cannot even meet because they cannot get through the bottleneck that is the slaughterhouse capacity.
Does the hon. member agree that while this is a nice, long term objective and that it may be important 10 years from now, in the immediate term we need to acknowledge the fact that we scarcely have the slaughterhouse capacity to service even Canadian retail demand?