Mr. Chair, the issue of the CAISP advance came up at the meeting of provincial ministers of agriculture and their deputy ministers along with the federal minister and deputy just two or three weeks ago. That has been seriously looked at. There is a recognition that the CAISP was designed to work in normal boom and bust cycles and level out the income levels in that way.
This is anything but normal. It was not envisioned that this would happen. Bringing forward a kind of advance on the CAISP is seriously being considered and was talked about extensively at the meeting. We want to make the CAISP work as well as it possibly can for the livestock industries as well as it does for others.
The bottom line principle behind that program by the Government of Canada was to bring it in and other programs so that at the end of the day the primary producers would have fair and reasonable incomes in their operations. That was the intent of the design. We will continually look at ensuring that the objective is being met and making improvements. We want to see some cash in the hip pockets of producers so that they can continue in one of the most important industries in this country and one of the backbones of the rural economy.