Madam Speaker, I am sitting here somewhat in disbelief listening to the rhetoric coming from the member for Malpeque.
In his comments about where we are heading with the agricultural industry, he blames it all on this government, when we know that the world is going through an economic recession that is driving down commodity prices worldwide and is no doubt hurting cattle and hog prices.
I am a cattle producer myself. I represent a large rural area. I have been to the cattle sales over the last couple of weeks and they have not been good, but that is not just because of things that are going on with the border and with the government. It is because of an oversupply of animals, high feed grain costs and high input costs. Those things are having an impact on price.
There is no question that country of origin labelling has had a major impact on trade going to the south. It presents some opportunities for us here to do more in processing locally and feeding more cattle locally, and we are starting to see a lot of initiatives. Just recently two processing plants in Manitoba got a $50 million program to help with loans to expand their plants and convert them into federally inspected plants that will help with regional processing there.
However, the member is completely wrong in some of his comments. I wonder why he went and voted against farmers in my riding. The other night on our ways and means motion, he voted against tax deferrals for farmers facing drought and flooding. My area has been hit really hard with flooding. He voted against that. Rather than standing up for farmers, he stood up for his leader.