Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have heard the minister today. I wish he had deigned to show up in the House when the Bloc Québécois called for and got an emergency debate on this subject on February 13.
Regardless, what most displeases us about his speech is his carefree attitude. The minister must be just about ready for retirement, because to hear him tell it, everything is going well and producers are happy. Yesterday, he met with 250 happy producers. I should let him know that agricultural producers are polite people. Obviously, they are going to be polite when meeting with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. That does not mean they do not have any demands.
He may have met with producers yesterday and shared a good meal with them, and found them to be happy, but I have a hard time understanding his attitude. I would like him to compare that meeting to his meeting with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture not so very long ago. At that meeting, the minister showed up, gave his speech, refused to answer any questions, and left.
In his speech, he said that people should be very careful from now on and that he did not want to hear another word from all of the groups opposed to his policy to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board. He only wanted to hear from what were, in his eyes, the right groups. Maybe those are the ones he was with yesterday.
If he were to go looking for problems, there certainly are problems to be found. All he has to do is open his eyes and ears. Even though the producers were polite and let him think that everything is going well, there are still problems, especially in the specified risk materials file.
In his speech just now, the minister told us that he was seeking to harmonize our regulations with the American ones. I want him to know that nothing has been resolved in the SRM file, nothing whatsoever. The Fédération des producteurs de bovins du Québec is asking for $50 million over two years, which is not much, to help it adjust to this new policy.
Nobody is saying that the government should not pay attention to harmlessness or security when it comes to SRMs. However, apparently we need harmonization with the United States. What is the minister's position on this issue? What is he doing? What is going on? Instead of meeting only with happy people, maybe he should meet with his American counterparts and do something to resolve this issue once and for all.