Madam Speaker, the numbers that I have been given this morning to create a slaughter capacity of 4,000 head a day on a two-ship plant are $111 million to build the plant, $30 million to get the inventory flowing through it, and another $10 million for start-up.
The people who are proposing this particular plant have done a lot of background work and are ready to go, but they need some direction. They are looking at loans, not grants, from the government, to be repaid when the plant is operational.
This size of plant will be competitive with the ones that presently exist. We are looking at $1 put up by our producers to $4 matched by the government, or somewhere in that range. If that leverage can be used, the money that the producers can put forward on a loan from the government, this would start the construction that we need in this country, hopefully a big plant in the east and another one in the west, to deal with the issue.