Agriculture committee  Thank you. It's always a pleasure.

Agriculture committee  I hope I answered your questions, Brian.

Agriculture committee  Market access globally gives us alternatives. In running a business, alternatives are a nice thing. It's critical we continue to go down that road. We can't let our major trading partner get ahead of us. It's better that we try to be the lead. As far as the United States goes, we really realize the importance of the elected officials having relationships with their counterparts, and the same at the regulatory level, which we have.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  You have implemented new equipment taxes that we can get back. We don't have to wait 52 weeks. We can get it back within 90 days after installation—90 days or 30 days? Don't quote me on that. It's returned almost instantly. We appreciate all that. The other issue is when you look at Canadian income—Rory deals with it on the pig side and we do on the beef side—we pay a couple of dollars an hour more for our labour in Canada, with pride.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, we have to decide whether we want to maintain an infrastructure in Canada; that's critical. There are no guarantees. We're working hard to keep the feedlots full in western Canada, as well as in the east, but the economics will go where they believe the money is the best.

Agriculture committee  Boiling water and slaughtering the chicken in the backyard for supper is a problem, too.

Agriculture committee  That's an interesting question. In the marketplace today we sense the border thickening—for different reasons. The trucks show up. Now we're going to start pulling STEC samples. They want to develop a baseline on all beef in their country. It probably should have been done before the regulation.

Agriculture committee  It's a good question, Bob. I guess I'm dating myself a bit. I came into this industry a few years ago, and where we were and where we are today.... We now have science in our building. Can you imagine? We're making meat, and we now apply science. We test. We have lot sizes. We test for pathogens.

Agriculture committee  I'll start where I left off, just because my tongue's still going. I think CFIA's managing it, and I have to leave it to the regulators. We support the single inspection system. CFIA is making modifications. From a food safety standpoint, they will not drop their standards. I believe they're managing it and are managing it well.

Agriculture committee  Sorry.

Agriculture committee  We want to put some numbers together because we believe that exporting product, meat as well as livestock, makes the food more competitive for our Canadian consumers, but that's an assumption. We have to spend some time working on it, because from a taxpayer's standpoint, and checkoff dollars from the cattle industry, millions of dollars a year are contributed to marketing.

Agriculture committee  Did that answer your question? I'm sorry. I don't have that number.

Agriculture committee  That's a good thing, but they're not going up quickly enough for a meat processor. We've got ourselves in a global shortage of protein. We've had a major drought in a major part of the United States. It was the Mexican drought that came up through Texas and chewed up their cow herd pretty heavily.

Agriculture committee  You need all the facts and figures in front of you before you can make a conscious decision. Where we get hooked as a manufacturer is when people use this for marketing tools, and that really annoys us, because currently we don't mishandle our livestock. We have cameras at our unloading areas to make sure our people handle them with the greatest of care.