Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest and some sympathy to what my colleague had to say. However I wish the Bloc members would not keep referring to the fact that the Minister of Agriculture is here. It is the duty of the Minister of Agriculture, in an opposition day debate on agriculture, to be here. The irresponsible one is the opposition leader who, after leading off the debate, then walked out.
Our minister in recent times has been in Quebec, as he has been in every region of the country, and has met with the farmers. However, today, for the sake of the farmers, he should be here to hear what all the parties have to say. I have a question for my colleague.
I want to say that the member's pride in Quebec agriculture is justified. In many ways it is a great example to the rest of the country. Every region has its strengths but to give an example compared with my farmers in Ontario, under the Conservative government, for every federal dollar that came into Ontario, the previous Conservative government only added 49ยข. I congratulate my colleague on the fact that for every federal dollar, and a lot of federal dollars went in, the Quebec government gave $2.22. I congratulate the member on that and on the way the different commodity groups are organized.
Billions of federal dollars have now been flowed for this crisis. How many billions does he want? What does he think the price of milk should be raised to, because I support raising it in order to deal with the cull cow crisis?