Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the leader of the official opposition. First, I want to reiterate that, indeed, a critical condition is to change the attitude that the previous Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food had. He had made this a national issue. More specifically, the mad cow disease issue had become a national problem. Moreover, the regulations and solutions were the same everywhere.
Yet, Quebec producers may be the most frustrated by this situation in the country, because they had a traceability system and they could follow their cattle from one end of the process to the other. When the first case of mad cow disease was discovered, measures could have been taken very quickly to define the region of origin and to properly target the problem and circumscribe it, as was done with the avian flu. Then, we would not have had the problem that affected the whole planet and brought the price of beef down throughout the world.
Is there not a way to find specific solutions, such as cull cows? Dairy producers are primarily located in Ontario and in Quebec. It is mostly there that there the issue of refund for cull cows remains unsolved.
Currently, people are compensated to the tune of 16% for their cull cows, while the replacement rate is 25%. This means that there is a shortfall.
Does the leader of the official opposition agree that we should take the same attitude with this issue as we did today with the throne speech to find solutions? This would force the government to come up with concrete solutions, even if these solutions might be different across the country. This would solve the issue and it would eliminate the problem that currently exists in Canada.