The assumption that the smaller plants were inefficient perhaps needs to be looked at a bit. What I saw happen in the context of Manitoba was that when Cargill established its presence in Alberta, Burns was quite active in Manitoba. Cargill's buyers in the spot market, purchasing fed cattle in Manitoba, bid the price up to a level that would put Burns in a negative position. Then Cargill used its big volume and its assets, which are deep, to do a loss-leader in the retail market that Burns had formerly been servicing. Burns cried uncle pretty quick at that. In this country we do not have competent antitrust legislation to protect the producer and the consumer and society from these types of abuses.
I took some good advice from a colleague of yours from Quebec, Gib Drury. He said that being successful in the local provincially oriented packing industry is not possible without provincial government support, and I would add to that federal government initiatives.
You talked about $50 million being announced in the budget. In all likelihood, if we follow past precedent, that $50 million will be administered so that it flows through our hands into the pockets of the multinational packers, as it did with BSE compensation in 2004. I suspect that the result of that would be that the members of this committee, perhaps, would block any effort, again, to open the packers' books so that we could examine why they took that money. I would expect that this is the way it would be.
If one wanted to be creative and wanted to strengthen the constituency one represented in rural Canada, one could say that if one could get the province to match that $50 million with $50 million and could get the producers themselves to match with another $50 million, with a joint effort we would have $150 million to invest in local packers across the country. Then we could provide local food to local people with local brands. One can only dream that those things are possible. Let's see which way the people around this table who have the power to determine that recommend that it go.