Madam Chair, on that point I would say that if we took a look at changing the burden of proof from the Competition Bureau from the criminal burden of proof, which sounds good, it is very a high bar to make it civil. I think that could be a much more effective organization.
I would certainly support the procedure and House affairs committee striking the agriculture committee immediately and looking into this issue of why the price has not gone down and why the only people who seem to be paying for this crisis are the consumers and the farmers. That is something which needs to be looked at. I think the people who are watching this debate at home can take some heart in the fact that the members of the agriculture committee who speak on this are extremely knowledgeable and short term, we need to be guided by what their recommendations are. They produce unanimous reports and they are very useful.
I want to just mention a couple of things to this member, in terms of maybe the longer term or the larger issue here.
It seems to me that if this had happened 10 years ago, given export statistics of Canadian cattle, we would have been in much better shape because much more of our domestic supply made up the larger market. Canadians stepped up to the plate. Canadians increased their consumption of beef through this crisis. If we were in the position the United States is, where upwards of 90% of its market is domestic, and if Canadians stepped up to the plate, we would not be in the situation we are in today.
Ironically, it is the government itself that launched programs through the 1990s to try to get farmers to get into export markets. I think that globalization is a bit of a double-edged sword. There are all kinds of opportunities, but there are also all kinds of risks. We are starting to see some of the risks of putting farmers in that position.
I have listened to descriptions of some of the problems faced by western farmers, but in eastern Ontario a lot of the beef farmers are not set up in terms of infrastructure and barns to finish these cows over the winter and provincially--