Mr. Chair, with the last three speakers on the other side, there certainly has been a conscious effort to fail to tell the whole story.
The member mentioned the CAIS program. While it was designed to level out the boom and bust years in a normal market situation, this is abnormal. This is disaster. There is no question about that and we admit it.
However, as a result of it being a disaster and going beyond to a certain extent the capabilities of the CAIS program, there have been close to $2 billion put in through various programs and some of that money is yet to be rolled out. I am not going to get into the announcement of September 10. We could go back to the records of tonight's proceedings and see how the government has somewhat changed its approach, to look at other alternatives, recognizing that it may be some time before the border is opened.
What has to be mentioned with regard to Canada's position on BSE is that no country has regained market share in such a short time after a BSE crisis as we have. We have regained 90% of our pre-BSE beef export levels. That is because of the work we have done through our regulatory authorities and the work we have done by going to Washington to open up those markets.
We are now moving 90% of pre-BSE beef export levels based on the recognition of the integrity of the measures and the inspection programs we have in place. That has never happened previously to countries which have had BSE. They have been shut out of the market for much longer times and some have never got back in. That is beef, not live cattle. That is strictly beef and beef products. We do not have the movement of live cattle into the U.S. or dairy heifers and we certainly do need that. We are not satisfied that the market has opened up far enough yet. We are going to continue to work at it.
In terms of the question as to why the Prime Minister is in Russia, France and Hungary, he is doing his job as Prime Minister of Canada. While he is there he has not forgotten about the beef industry. He is there trying to open up markets for our agricultural products in Russia and those other countries as well.
As I said earlier, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and China doing the same thing. He is trying to open up markets for our agricultural industry so that we have less dependence on the market south of the border. They are doing their job.
The Prime Minister has met a number of times with Mr. Bush. President Bush has stated that he would like to see the border opened as soon as possible. I would agree, for whatever that means, because it has not opened up as soon as I would have liked to see it opened.
In terms of a game plan, if there are other instances that happen, that game plan is in place. It is in place through our regulatory authorities. We are now doing quite a number of animal testings. I believe it is 8,000 that we are trying to test this year in terms of BSE, ramping up to 30,000 next year. I will have to double check those numbers, but we have a plan in place to ensure that our livestock products, that our beef products of cattle, sheep and other ruminants are the safest food quality in the world. That is what we intend to maintain. We have the regulatory regime to back it up.
We have announced a number of programs to try to get money into the farmers' pockets, to tide them over. We know that is a difficult situation. As well, I talked earlier about trying to make the market return to normal circumstances.