Madam Chair, I agree with some of the points the member raised in terms of the situation on the farm. It is serious and we have said that. We have been trying to work at that.
In fact, I had the pleasure of being on the Prime Minister's task force on the future of farming out of which came roughly $6 billion for the agricultural industry and a safety net program. Is it as good as it could be? Improvements can always be made.
The member opposite tried to leave this impression, and this is one of the troubles that I have with the party opposite. He said that the government said that it did not matter because only 2% of the people were in agriculture. I say to the member opposite, that kind of rhetoric I do not appreciate.
We care about farmers on this side too. I would ask the member opposite to tell me directly what government member on this side of the House ever said that they are only 2% of the people and they do not matter. We are supposed to be having a take note debate to improve the situation, not get into the falsified rhetoric that the member opposite is doing and leaving the impression that we do not care. We do.
We put in place the business risk management program. On the CAISP that the member talked about, close to 70% of cattle producers are in fact triggering a CAISP payment. The federal government announced the CAISP special per head interim payment for 2004 for producers of eligible cattle and specific ruminants based on inventories as of December 23, 2003, in order to address the cash flow and liquidity issues. That was one of the programs that really worked. It got the money out to producers in a hurry.
The program that was announced in May worked well because it was a simple application. Yes, I agree with the member opposite that the CAISP application is terribly complicated and we have to improve it. However, the application in April was a simple program and the returns went out in a matter of 30 days. It was based on inventory numbers. It is not that the government is not doing anything. We have the CAISP. We have production insurance that will hopefully deal with some of those crop problems the member talked about.
The key point I want to make is that the kind of rhetoric that the member is insinuating, that someone on this side said that farmers did not matter, is wrong and he should apologize to every member in the House.