Mr. Chair, the member is going to have to go back to the record and read it as well, because this has been mentioned a number of times tonight and this morning. The fact of the matter is that there is quite a lobby on our side in the United States, which we have engineered. We have worked with the National Cattlemen's Association in the United States. I met with them myself in their boardroom, along with a number of others. There is the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which is also a fairly powerful lobby in the United States representing the grocery store chains and the packing industries. They have been pressuring to get the border open. So we have done our job there.
I do want to correct the member on one point. He did say that we cannot service our domestic demands, lack of slaughter capacity. The fact is not only are we meeting our domestic demands for beef products, but we are also back to 90% pre-BSE levels on our exports of beef products to the United States, with 213,849 tonnes of product. The problem with the slaughter capacity is that we have too many cattle in this country under this current situation and that is what we are trying to correct in this program that we announced.
Because some of the points the member raised really relate to the September 10 announcement by the minister in relation to this, I would think he should be congratulating us for that announcement of September 10 because it does in fact mention some of things that the Conservative Party could be on side with.