You just look so intense up there, Mr. Speaker, I knew you were hanging on every word and agreeing.
The CAIS program never delivered for livestock. It never really delivered in any way for grains and oilseeds. In the new programs that we have delivered and are going forward, we are working with our counterparts at the provincial and territorial levels in an unprecedented collaborative way, and we have also included industry. There has been a fulsome discussion on what is needed to be in the new programs to make them user friendly. There is no sense developing programs as we did for years under the previous government that missed the mark, that never sent the money where it needed to go. It was eaten up in administration as it went out, was clawed back and changes were done.
We have made changes in the new program. We actually altered the last year of CAIS as much as we could without provincial collaboration. The provinces wanted to hold it as it was; so be it, that is their decision. At the end of the day, we delivered more money in a different way through the old CAIS program than ever would have been thought of because we listened to producers, and we did it without using ad hoc and band-aid solutions that mask the market signals.
Certainly producers are going to have to adjust, but they have to have time to do that. They have to come to grips with the dollar that is up, which this government does not control. They have to look at the instances of input costs going up. There are a lot of things driving that, right back to the cost of fuel in delivering the grain to the elevator.
We have made unprecedented moves to deliver different livestock feeds. There is a biofuels program. The member opposite says he agrees with that, and I welcome that, but his old colleagues from the NFU are going coast to coast on a government grant--figure that one out--saying how bad that is.
Biofuels are the best thing that has been announced for rural Canada in a generation. They are going to reinvigorate rural Canada. They are going to bring communities back onside with the extra jobs. It gives farmers a different place to deliver their product, which helps bring the price up on their products. It is a good news story all around, because it is also very good for the environment to start moving away from fossil fuels and getting into green energy. There are major changes coming on that as we move to cellulosic as opposed to feed grain stocks.
There are a lot of stories out there, and the NFU has fallen for this, that somehow we cannot do both food and fuel. Maybe the way its members farm from the 1940s they cannot, but it will only take 5% of our production to cover off the three billion litres of ethanol that we are calling for with our program, only 5%. The other 95% stays in the food line, in the export line and everything else. Weather systems account for more than 5% in variables, Mr. Speaker. You know that, I know that, everybody in this place knows that. It is a good news story and the crazy stories out there saying that we cannot do both are ridiculous, to say the least and stay polite within the political language that is allowed here.
On trade, my seatmate, the hon. Minister of International Trade, is doing yeoman service. We are out there making bilateral agreements with countries that are looking for the quality that we have in our dairy, our beef, our genetics, and our grains and oilseeds sectors. They are clamouring for them around the globe.
I have had the great opportunity to travel to some of those countries, and I will be doing some more over the break week coming up, to reinvigorate the trade that those guys let slide. The Liberals slagged our major trading partner to the point where we were losing out to the Americans. The Americans did bilateral trade agreements with a lot of the countries that we used to deal with. They are now eating our lunch because those guys looked the other way and did not get it done. On so many levels, the Liberals did not get it done. We have reinvigorated trade.
I have made a move as the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to get rid of KVD, kernel visual distinguishability. The only jurisdiction left on the globe that uses KVD is the Canadian Wheat Board area of western Canada, the only one. What that has done has stopped us from developing innovative varieties of grains that would feed the livestock sector in a better way than they are doing now.
There are grains and so on available to producers in North Dakota and Montana that were developed at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon because they could not do the ground testing in western Canada because of KVD. That is gone. We are not going to allow those types of things to stymie trade.
The member quoted a few articles from the paper but he did it in a cut and paste editorialized way that those members like to do. The reality out there is there are other good news stories. The value of farmland in Canada is up almost 8%. The only jurisdiction where it is down is in the member's own province. People should talk to him about that. Maybe he should get on board with some of our programs.
I have an excellent working relationship with Neil LeClair, the minister of agriculture there. We have done some great things for livestock on the island.