Mr. Speaker, I want to return to the national guidelines for meat quality inspection. The federal government does have a role in interprovincial trade of products. To rely completely on the provinces to come to an agreement on interprovincial trade has been long in coming. It is something we have been talking about for over 10 years. We are at the point now that the federal government, in a desperate situation, needs to take the leadership and develop a two-tiered national standard, one for export and one for domestic trade. All I am asking the government to do is take a hard look at developing that, crediting some of these provincial plans for interprovincial trade on a different level than the current federal inspection.
The loan loss program is out and running, but it took far too long from the announcement that it was available to actually get going. One of the problems that has been brought to my attention with the loan loss program is that some of these packing plant projects that are under way are using some provincial financing through their credit agencies. My understanding is that the loan loss program is not available to those projects because of provincial government involvement and their financing.
My concern is that by not having the program available it is going to stall some of these current expansions, especially because these expansions, these smaller projects, are addressing the need of dealing with mature animals. As the hon. member realizes, we have a situation where mature cattle and mature bison are not finding a place to be slaughtered because all the expansion has taken place on the youthful animals, by far the most lucrative market.