Mr. Speaker, we have allowed the processing industry to become situated in too few hands and to become almost monopolized by too few big operators to the detriment, as the Bloc leader said this morning, to more regional development.
He talks about money that is available for new producing operations in regional areas, for smaller producers. Perhaps co-ops, owned by farmers who have some stake in that, might be a way into the future that would be more helpful and sort of inoculate us against what we have seen over the last couple of years with the closing of the border.
That is something that he might look at, although I must say, in tandem with my colleague from Timmins--James Bay, that the way the government is getting the money into the hands of people who want to set up these new production facilities is not as helpful as it could be. Loan guarantees and those kinds of approaches are not helpful to farmers who are having a difficult time getting by from one day to the next. They are looking forward to perhaps being involved in a production operation of their own.