Mr. Chair, I want to congratulate the member on her first speech in the House.
I would suggest that probably for a maiden speech the member set a record for either being the latest maiden speech in the evening or the earliest in the morning, if someone wants to look into that, but I do congratulate the member on her speech.
I want to deal with one point. The member raised the question of why did the government direct the money to the processors? The fact of the matter is, we did not. I agree that the money did not get to where it was intended to go. I was involved in the design of the program and every effort was made to try and ensure that the prices would not drop and the farmer would end up maybe getting the money out of the government program, but taking a loss on the decline in prices. Every effort was made to ensure that would not happen, but in fact it did and we admit that.
The problem showed up later when we wanted to find out as an agricultural committee, did the packing industry really gouge the farmer in that instance? The only way we could do that was to get hold of the books of the packing industry and examine those books. In fact, this House charged the packers with contempt.
When we went to fine them $250,000 a day until they produced their books, a member from the previous Canadian Alliance Party opposed in this House the ability for us to do that. We were not able to challenge the packers in terms of what they did and whether they gained excess profit or not because a member of that party prevented us from doing that. That point should be made.
Let me close and say that we have had many hours of debate last Thursday night and tonight into the early morning. On Thursday night the minister tried to outline some of the facts on what the government is doing. I hope people will take the time and look at those facts. There have been some suggestions coming from the other side in the take note debate that I think are worthy of consideration. I assure members that we will look at those points.
The bottom line for me at the end of the day is that we must have a situation where our producers can survive and prosper in this country. It is a difficult situation, but we need to try and get there. What we must keep uppermost in our mind is the financial health of our primary producers and their families.