Madam Chair, in answer to my colleague's last question, I was actually a bit surprised last year that there was not more uptake from the government to the offer from the cattlemen's association and others in the industry that some money go to them, especially on the cull cattle, but that they be given the option of whether they wanted to market that cow or that animal today or whether they wanted to hold on to her until the market improved.
For whatever reason the governments, because the provinces were involved as well, did not want to follow that option. I think what the cattlemen were saying was that if they all had to market their cattle immediately obviously that would depress the prices. If they could have spread it out over some time, that would give the industry an opportunity and prices should go up accordingly.
I do not know what the rationale for that was. I think in hindsight that frankly it was a mistake that they did not proceed in the manner.
The intervenor mentioned the Competition Bureau. A half a dozen members of my caucus had written to the Competition Bureau last October requesting it to look at what appeared to us to be price collusion, and we wanted it investigated.
Subsequently, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food put in a similar request. I am sad to say that from the acting commissioner, we both got the short end of stick. I will quote the last paragraph. It says, “With respect to requests that the Bureau of Competition agree to an immediate and thorough review of the BSE recovery program, in order to determine whether the more than $460 million from taxpayers was fairly and properly distributed within the industry, I should point out that this falls outside the scope of the Bureau's mandate”.
I think that is highly unfortunate for a lot of Canadians and certainly for cattle producers.