Agriculture committee  Well, I probably would suggest that the Canadian Pork Council doesn't have an official position on when the price will turn around.

Agriculture committee  But I will tell you what I think. Certainly since last August and last fall, as Curtiss mentioned, prices were really low. The U.S. wholesale price of pork was 45¢ to 50¢, and now it's 75¢. So that's a dramatic increase just since last August, let's say, at the height of the H1N1

Agriculture committee  Yes, I'll comment on that. That's probably one of the biggest frustrations, and quite frankly, I've heard it from the government as well, just how willing banks are to lend money. It's a real challenge. From our point of view, we get into this recession that we have, which has

Agriculture committee  Thanks. I say I think there's a light at the end of the tunnel because some of the things are already changing. Certainly the market for pork is getting stronger. We went through the H1N1 fiasco last summer, and that's obviously behind us. We don't have the press that goes along

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Thanks, Alex. It's an excellent question. And you're right, I think I was probably here at that first meeting as well. It's been a real challenge. There are a lot of things that went on, including commodity prices. Various commodities just went crazy. And a lot of those are inpu

Agriculture committee  Yes, I'm the poster boy of a bruised industry. We are bruised, and just the ability to access credit, to be able to do the things and run our business the way we used to be able to is challenged. The Canadian dollar, as Jim mentioned, is over 98¢ again, and so even though the A

Agriculture committee  It's probably the most successful non-trade barrier that we've ever seen.

Agriculture committee  I'll comment on the issue around COOL, because in my case I do ship weaner pigs down to the States. We actually maintain ownership down there and then sell the pigs to the slaughter plant. We had a four-year contract with the slaughter plant. When the new administration came in

Agriculture committee  I would love to comment on that, certainly from our point of view. On this whole issue you mentioned around the subsidy on corn in the United States, of course, I feed some pigs down in the United States as well as in the Maritimes, and there are certain things we do to be compet

Agriculture committee  That's a really good question. I want to make it very clear right at the outset that we think the AgriStability program is excellent. It has evolved over several years since the 1990s and has helped producers through times when prices went up and down. That's what it's meant to d

Agriculture committee  In our case, we send half our pigs to the U.S. as baby pigs and we finish them down there. As Jurgen said, the model made a lot of sense. It was cheaper to finish them down there and certainly cheaper to process them. They have a very strong processing industry down there and acc

Agriculture committee  I indicated at the very start that we're very disappointed in the response of the government. I'm not sure whether “abandoning” is the right word. We worked with the bureaucrats to find ways to speed up payments and to get the TAP payments out quicker than they might normally hav

Agriculture committee  You asked about how many families there are. We know that in Ontario alone, 52,000 sows have gone to market. That represents about a million hogs a year and about 50 farm families. That's a lot of people.

Agriculture committee  Can I respond quickly?