Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sherbrooke for his question.
Actually I am refusing to call the $350 million amount compensation, because it is not.
When compensation was set at $4.3 billion, it was calculated that this was how much the sector was losing. We see it in the diafiltered milk coming across the border. I have met with young dairy farmers who said that the losses, for some as much as $50,000 per year, were as big as their profit margins.
The $350 million spread over five years is being called compensation. That is a misnomer. It is a subsidy, a new subsidy. During the announcement, the Liberals said that it was a modernization subsidy. The dairy farmers in my riding have already modernized. I have visited their farms and have already seen their milking machines.
The subsidy will not even pay for the electricity needed to run the milking machines. The subsidy is basically telling farmers that they have to keep going deeper in debt and keep investing. However, they have already invested a lot. They are going to see their incomes drop, since production is expected to decrease because of the agreement and its 17,000 tonnes of cheese.
Currently, what they are being told is that they will be given a subsidy if they invest more, despite their losses. This is unacceptable.