Madam Speaker, every time the minister gets up and talks about agriculture, he proves he was a banker.
Our program has absolutely nothing to do with supply management. We are going to backstop that industry contrary to what the minister and his cronies did over in Geneva where they put it on the chopping block. These folks need time to adjust. Those guys went over there and ponied up and changed things before anybody here had a chance to say what was needed. The minister spoke earlier about 40 representatives being along with him, but they were not allowed in the same room, so that was a bit of a false statement.
The minister also made a point about my commenting on the $110 million that went out under that CAIS advance. The point I made to the minister was that the industry lost $2 billion and more but the best the government could do was to advance $110 million. That was nowhere near the coverage that was required.
Out of the $1.8 billion that he talked about, last fall at committee his own officials alluded that only $250 million of that had been triggered at an administration cost of $154 million. The minister can check the blues on that one. That is what they said. Some $14 million of that $154 million was to administer the cash on deposit program that nobody wants. Even the bureaucrats do not want it. The safety net advisory committee said to get rid of it. The provinces said to get rid of it. They know the cash is not going to come back out of the minister's programs.
A lot of things need to be done. The problem will not get fixed by that side of the House because nobody is listening. They would far rather defend what they have proposed than step back, realize certain portions of it are not working, fix it, and move ahead. They should have done it yesterday.