Mr. Chair, I think our leader spelled it out pretty well. I tried to spell it out, but I will say it again. The very first action of the cabinet was to send out three-quarters of a billion dollars.
I realize that people want more, but there are two things to remember. The first is that every dollar we had parliamentary approval for we sent out the door the day that we formed the cabinet. The second thing is there is a clear promise of a major improvement to the base agricultural budget: $2.5 billion over the next five years. That is not chump change either. That is a lot of money.
When the budget is tabled and we see what our Minister of Finance has in there--and it is going to be a great package; I am looking forward to it--I hope that members opposite will help pass it quickly so that we can get whatever measures that are in there--and I cannot announce the budget today--out to Canadians across the country as quickly as possible.
However, other things are not going to be solved in eight weeks. That is a fact. I wish it were so, but when there are programs that have been badly designed, when a series of decisions made by previous governments have tied our hands in some ways, it will take us time to take corrective measures to design and implement better programs, to get more money into them, which we are going to do, and to negotiate better deals and opportunities for our producers across the country while we build secondary opportunities for them in our own country. These are things like biofuels and nutraceuticals and other opportunities, all of which we plan to do, but it is not going to happen in eight weeks. Some of the money has gone out quickly. There will be more coming fairly quickly, but it cannot be solved in eight weeks and I am not going to pretend it can. The farmers are not silly. They know it cannot be done that quickly, but as soon as we get the budget before the House, I hope it can have speedy passage.