Mr. Chair, I want to congratulate the hon. member on his remarks because we are getting late into the evening and he is the first speaker from the opposition party who has actually had some concrete, clear-cut proposals. It was good to hear. I think there were some good suggestions.
I am especially pleased and did not realize until tonight that the opposition took some of their agriculture policy direction out of the Speller task force report on the future of farming. That is indeed good to know. Maybe we are not so far apart after all.
On the member's first point, that being the construction of slaughter capacity, I wonder if he could elaborate a little on how he sees the government being more involved. Certainly we have put out measures for small and medium-sized plant operations. I would agree with increasing Canada's capacity to slaughter. That is basically what we had to do in the hog industry when the Americans gave us a rough time. We built our own industry. Now we are recognized in hogs as the best around the world.
We have a tremendous beef industry, but we must have, as the minister so often has said, a more Canadian approach. Could the member expand on that point and also on the herd rationalization program he mentioned?