Mr. Speaker, I remind the parliamentary secretary that until those borders are opened up, it does not matter how many government programs there are. Cattle producers are going to be losing money, the ones who are primarily in the beef industry.
My question for the member is with regard to the cull program. The cull program that was brought out applies only to animals over 30 months of age. Many of the bred heifers that are 24 to 30 months of age and which will be calving in the next few weeks will have to be culled but there is no program for them. The bulls were not included in the cull program. They should have been because every ranch of a commercial size has between 10 and 30 bulls.
There is another thing that the beef industry did not fare very well on. The dairy lobby did a very good job of getting a 16% cull rate applied to the dairy herds. The parliamentary secretary and the Minister of Agriculture have said to the beef industry that it only gets an 8% cull. As a result we end up with the beef producer whose income relies 100% on the sale of beef getting an 8% cull rate and the dairy industry getting 16%.
I am not speaking against the dairy industry. I am saying that the government screwed the beef farmer.