Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question gives me an opportunity to speak to the agricultural sector. As I have told the House on many occasions, I have a large agricultural sector in the rural area I represent. It is made up of not only dairy farmers, but a feather industry, crops and grain, as well as the cattle industry.
He asked a question about the $17.1 million for slaughter. We all know a program was put forward but we also know that it takes time to build those processing plants in order to make sure they are up to speed.
We saw the introduction of a processing plant in Kitchener and it has yet to go into full production. It is getting close to that but there are some questions around the testing of it, et cetera. That is not to say that some work has not been done, but we certainly have not been able to meet the needs with the speed that the agricultural community requires.
With regard the CAIS program, we are pleased to hear that following a motion put by our opposition party to eliminate the cash deposit requirement, the government has included that in the budget. However it will not happen immediately.
As was said earlier today, we all know the CAIS program, essentially, does not work. The CAIS program does not immediately put the money at the gates of the farms where it is needed. The CAIS program needs to be improved. It needs to be less onerous on the farmers. We also have to make sure that those cheques arrive when they are needed, not months later. We found last year that people were still waiting. We were discussing 2004 needs but people were still waiting for 2003 cheques to arrive. With that kind of delay, that is not addressing an immediate crisis, an immediate need at the farm gates where families are feeling the challenges of increasing debts.
The dairy farmers, as the hon. member has mentioned, have seen some redress. However, to raise the price of milk, we still have the cull cows on the farm. They are still in the field. How will we address that for the dairy farmers as well?
As we have said, for the farmers and the agricultural community, it just seems to be compounding and we are still waiting for the government to deliver cash to the people who need it now. We can have the building of slaughter capacity and programs that will come into place in 2006 and beyond, but what will happen in this budget year 2005-06?