Mr. Chair, I want to thank my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois for his passionate discourse this evening on Quebec and on wanting a program that would work in that province. I would encourage him to speak to his provincial government. In Alberta we have a government that did respond to the need. We had a government that stepped up to the plate and took the initiative because we have a minister who understands the industry and the problem and responded. I would encourage the Quebec provincial government to step up to the plate as well.
I would like to ask my colleague a question. As I travelled through my riding this summer, a number of times I was reminded about the series of emergencies that we have had in this country. We had the outbreak of SARS. Two years ago my province of Alberta had the worst drought ever in 133 years. We came close to and were concerned about the foot and mouth disease, but we got hit with the BSE.
It seems the government has a knee-jerk reaction every time it tries to respond, but it has no comprehensive plan that would be ready to go quickly when a disaster strikes. With SARS it was scrambling. With the drought it did not know what to do. With the BSE there was the hope that the border would open soon. This was always the carrot that was being held in front of us: the border will open soon. There was no plan, no action and no assistance. That seems to be the general commentary on what the government does.
In this program the government talks about the need for extra slaughter capacity. Yet when we talk to the individuals who are working hard to try to put together plans and who in some cases come up with over 50% of the funding that is needed, what we hear is that they go to lending institutions and the lending institutions say the money the government is giving is just a pittance. It is a simply a loan loss reserve fund that really is not significant and basically gives very little assurances to the lending institutions.
Many of the banks are asking why they would risk lending to an industry that could go either way, an industry at risk. In many instances when the people putting forward the effort to build the plant come back to their investors, they have to be very careful. If they come back and say the banks are balking because the feds have not developed any tax incentives or anything that is going to really work, they are almost worse off than they were before.
My question to my colleague is whether he believes there should be some type of emergency contingency fund in place that the minister can access quickly so he is not always going to the executive level or to the cabinet, begging and begging. To be quite frank, I believe that any minister would want to be able to come up with more financing. I am sure the treasury is sometimes the biggest frustration the minister faces.
Does the hon. member believe there should be an emergency contingency fund to help producers? Also, what should the government do that would provide banks with more incentives to help capacity grow?