Mr. Chair, part of the frustration of being from Atlantic Canada and going through the BSE crisis is that most people think it is an Alberta issue or a western Canadian issue, but there are farmers in my riding, in my province and in all of Atlantic Canada who have lost all their equity.
The federal programs have not been there to help them. I think most of us are coming to the conclusion that we have to adapt to the fact that we are not going to have access to the American market like we have had in the past. Maybe we will not have access to it at all. We have to work to find new markets and prepare ourselves for the new reality.
Right now so many farmers are on the very edge or verge of selling all their cattle and walking away from farms that have been in their families for decades. They need some encouragement, some wisdom and some help from the government just in order to stay on the farm and keep on going.
In Atlantic Canada, we suffer from a lack of slaughter capacity. We have no federally inspected slaughter capacity now in Atlantic Canada. All of our beef goes to central Canada. When there is a market in Atlantic Canada, we should be able to service it ourselves, but we cannot because we do not have federally inspected slaughter capacity.
P.E.I. and the co-op in P.E.I. have invested a great deal of money in a brand new plant in Borden to try to service all the maritime provinces. Both the co-op and the province have put a lot of money into this. They have a tremendous commitment to it and it is almost done, but already they have two problems. One is traceability. They cannot access the government program for traceability. We need traceability in Atlantic Canada so that we can guarantee a quality product and prevent any of the BSE issues that have happened in the past.
The other thing is that we already need an expansion of that plant to do a cull cow line so that cull cows can be processed there in a federally inspected process. Then we could provide that meat to Atlantic Canada, become self-sufficient, stop the importation of beef and help our own farmers survive. That is all the farmers want. They do not want handouts. They do not want gifts. They want the ability to survive.
In the last few days I have had discussions with the minister. He has indicated a willingness to provide traceability and to provide the funding, or he has certainly given encouraging comments on that. I hope he will stand tonight and confirm that and give the farmers in the maritime provinces some hope that they will be able to sell their products and sell their cows for what they are worth. That is all they ask. They do not ask for anything other than the ability to survive and market their beef.
I ask the minister to stand tonight and say to Atlantic Canada that there is help and there will be help in these two areas of traceability and funding for the cull cow line.