Agriculture committee  My answer is yes on that. We have bona fide producers who are much larger than the meat packers when it comes to owning cattle. So it is the Canadian Cattlemen's policy that whether you're big or small, you can access the program.

Agriculture committee  Pardon me?

Agriculture committee  I understand that, but I think that's an old story--and some of the old is still current. I apologize, but I think that's miscommunication from this room of what's really happened. Maybe we have to work together on communication; I think we lack that, too. There was an inner cir

Agriculture committee  I would reinforce that. We've talked about international markets, and we agree that international markets are great, but the United States is still the key. The world market is in the United States. That is where the world price of beef is set. As goes the United States, so goes

Agriculture committee  I agree with you. On those points that you mentioned there, that is the Canadian Cattlemen's Association policy on AgriStability. And I do apologize; “CAIS” is old-school, “AgriStability” is the new word.

Agriculture committee  Yes. There are some changes to the CAIS program in AgriStability, but we definitely believe, and it is the policy of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, that those points you made on reference margins and viability tests are our policy. We definitely want to see something add

Agriculture committee  We can make the industry sustainable, even if it is export-oriented. We wouldn't want to liquidate to the 3.6 million that we could handle domestically. That would mean a lot of producers would have to go out of business.

Agriculture committee  Let me address that. There has to be a personal element of optimism within any young individual to go into farming. It's all about having hope and trying. There's always a future. There's always hope. The young individual who gets into farming has to have that spirit if they're

Agriculture committee  I'll go for that first. I would say we probably have three main issues: trade, COOL, and profitability of the industry; that's another challenge before us right now. Many of the folks in the cattle industry are liquidating and the beef supply is being reduced. The cow numbers ar

Agriculture committee  First of all, in terms of any cattle that meat packers own, they only own them for the last 120 to 200 days of the animal. They don't produce those animals. They buy those animals, all from farmers. As I say, those are all good cheques, and we enjoy selling our cattle to willing

Agriculture committee  Well, that would be my personal opinion, to take the money from Alberta. Our policy in the Canadian Cattlemen's Association is to make the CAIS program much more responsive, so that individual provinces don't need to launch their own programs.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to address that, if I may.

Agriculture committee  We have the CAIS program. You talked about balkanization, with some provinces having various provincial programs, and about what the federal level can do. From the Canadian cattlemen's perspective, we have been lobbying for some modifications to many of the details within the CAI

Agriculture committee  First of all, it's a policy within the Canadian Cattlemen's Association that we believe in free and open markets. The NFU policy of restricting supply by closing borders and talking strictly domestically would, we believe, be very restrictive to producers. It would mean that almo

Agriculture committee  Regionally, there are places in Canada that are in a deficit of capacity to slaughter animals. However, one of the best ways to address that issue, I believe, is openness across that international market. We need to be able to move cattle from areas of surplus in Canada to some m