Mr. Speaker, the second petition is something that has not been presented today. This is a petition from a number of concerned citizens, many of them farmers, who ask us to cast our minds back to the shutting down of the U.S. border and other borders to Canadian beef in 2003 and the period of time during which a tremendous financial hardship was suffered by beef farmers and the beef industry in Canada as a result of the BSE crisis. The evidence that the petitioners point out strongly suggests that the agriculture department did not adequately take protections in advance to defend their interests.
Therefore, the petitioners call upon the government to appoint someone like Justice Frank Iacobucci, who served as a mediator in a similar case of government neglect, to serve as a mediator to facilitate a settlement between the Government of Canada and cattle farmers with respect to the costs that were imposed on the industry by the inappropriate actions of the agriculture department at the time.