Agriculture committee  The reality on July 13 is that the product that was worth $150 to $200 a head is going to be worth about minus $60 to minus $80 a tonne. In the U.S. it's still going to be worth $150 to $200 a tonne, so they're going to be competing for those cattle. That may change if they adopt a different policy, but there's no evidence that's going to occur quickly.

Agriculture committee  Just to add to that, we're not even privy to how much money is allocated province by province.

Agriculture committee  Well, the indication we've gotten, as far as the $80 million and then the subsequent 40% match that's expected of the provinces goes, is that while they have a working group looking at this, the expenditure of that money is going to fall back to each single province once they've signed the agreement.

Agriculture committee  The first thing is that we know there's money, but none of it's been spent, so it hasn't even gone anywhere. That's part of the problem.

Agriculture committee  In addition, our programs concerning the health of animals are national, not provincial. As far as we know, agriculture isn't divided provincially; it's national. There are issues related in our Constitution to property rights and so forth that are divided along different.... The industry as a whole is committed to a national approach on this, and it's essential work.

Agriculture committee  I want to add that as we analyze this from the round table, one of the issues is that we export close to half of our production, and the U.S. exports about 10% of theirs. We're far more vulnerable than they are. We recognize, through the work we've done, that the current feed bans in North America will eventually lead to eradication.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, I certainly need to involve the provinces, because they are an important part of this solution. But we don't need a new set of federal-provincial agreements to address this. That task force that is moving around the country is starting to look at transition measures.

Agriculture committee  I just want to add that the two-year period we're talking about is a period of time for additional financial assistance. We're going to have higher volumes of product containing SRM because we're not going to have the infrastructure to segregate it, as we talked about earlier. We also have very limited places and uses for it.

Agriculture committee  I chair the beef value chain round table, and we have discussed this issue. I think the first step, as Jim acknowledged, is pretty clear: we have to identify that this is a serious problem, and the current program is not going to be capable of addressing it. The second thing we've asked for is that we convene a meeting very quickly, involving federal officials and the industry, with a commitment to work towards this transition program, not to sit there and argue for the next 12 weeks, as we did in the early part of the BSE crisis, on whether we need to do something.

Agriculture committee  We should clarify that they were designed to remove SRMs from the food portion, which they do completely, but they all go into the same disposal lines that come out of their system. At that point when most of those investments were made, there was still quite a discussion on whether to go with the long list or the short list.

Agriculture committee  On that, we have had conversations with the minister and the senior officials. Our understanding is that they have indicated that the federal funds are available and eligibility will not be dependent on the commencement of the projects afterwards. In other words, they're willing to accept the retroactivity that we've asked for, but it gets bogged down because of the federal–provincial agreement that's required, with most provinces saying they have to go to their treasury departments first before they're prepared to make that commitment.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  You're right.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, to your previous question, then your latter question, certainly there are elements you have to have the provincial governments involved in, and then you fall into the regulations to deal with disposal. An enormous amount of work has gone into trying to address that, but with federal–provincial agreements it always comes down to that point around getting the final financial agreements signed.

Agriculture committee  Do you want me to answer the smaller-plant question?