Madam Speaker, the hon. member made the comment that he wanted to be assured that President Bush had been approached directly with respect to the border and BSE. I can give him that assurance, having done that personally.
In addition, he talked about the program of September 10 as being a repositioning program and said that he felt that was an appropriate route to go, if I understood him. He had some criticisms with it, which I understand, and I agree with him. However he also said that there has been no progress in respect of that. Through the work we have done with CFIA, by next week we will have two new federally regulated slaughter plants.
In terms of our set aside programs, we have seen very good recovery, not as much as we would like to see yet, but good recovery on fed cattle prices. We are seeing recovery on the feeder cattle side.
In terms of the additional markets, we have achieved success with the work we have done in Hong Kong, on the agreement with China, and the work being done and progress being made in both the Japanese and Taiwanese marketplaces. We have a managing older animals component of that program that has not been fully taken up. A lot of suggestions have been made on how we can turn that program into something that works better in terms of cull animals, and I do not disagree with that.
In terms of the September 10 program and those specific component parts, does the member have any specific recommendations on how he would like to see it approached differently so that we can get even more progress than what we are getting right now?