Response to Question - October 12th, 2004

Mr. Leon Benoit (Vegreville—Wainwright, CPC): Madam Chair, I am pleased to have time to say a few words on this and to ask a question of the member opposite.

He rightfully acknowledged that his government blew it when it came to the program on delivering money to cattlemen which ended up going primarily to the packers. That was a good step forward but he went on to say that he found it morally reprehensible that the packers were reaping such huge profits.

I would ask the member what the most effective thing the government could do to help solve that problem? I would suggest that it would be to help create competition, to really have some money flow that would allow and encourage new packing plants to get on stream as soon as possible.

The government has said that it has $68 million or some such figure that will go to that. In fact, it is about half of that. However we find out how from the provinces that the money will not flow for at least three months.

On the one hand the member says that he finds it reprehensible that the packers are making this kind of profit. On the other hand, his government has done nothing in a year and a half to put even one new packer in place. As of right now, no government money is going to help a packing plant start up. That is a sad commentary on this government.

Could the member explain to us and to the cattlemen in particular why it is that the money has not done the job in helping even one packing plant start up?

Mr. Paul Steckle: Madam Chair, if I ever said that government by itself made all the decisions in terms of program then I was wrong, but I did not say that.

What I said had to do with the way that we delivered the program, but let me tell him that it was done with the concurrence of the primary sector, the beef producers themselves and our farm organization. We did not walk alone.

The first program, as he will recall, was a program where we talked about loan guarantees. That never even came to the table before it was taken off. We ended up with cash to the farmers, which ended up being a bad plan. Nevertheless, that is what we put forward.

I think it is also fair to say that no one in their wildest dreams ever thought that 17 or 18 months later this problem would still not be resolved. We should have known. The protocol, if taken to its ultimate limit, would be seven years. We are just nicely into the seven year period. That does not make it any easier to swallow.

Having said that, there is now money for the packing houses. Some people have said that we should have gone to chapter 11 and had a challenge on that. If we had told the people then that it would take two or three years they would have said that was not acceptable.

We have to understand that there was a farming community that thought there was an imminent end to this issue but they needed money quickly. The government, therefore, had to respond quickly or we would have heard from the member's side, from other opposition members and perhaps even from our own side that we were not delivering quickly enough.

It was a case of delivery and then we found out that it was not working quite the way we figured it would work, but is that not often the way it goes, even the way we do our own business sometimes? I think we responded rather quickly and I think we responded favourably to those who were helping us design programs. I think in fairness to all, there is enough blame to go around for all.