Mr. Barlow.
Mr. Chair, it is not new money; it has been budgeted year after year and it's budgeted again for next year. The cattlemen said that the set-aside funds that the minister is talking about are already gone and did not last even two weeks. If this government isn't assisting Canadian farmers, is the government's food policy to rely on food imported from foreign countries to feed Canadian families ?
Mr.Chair, the fund to assist our beef producers cannot have already disappeared because the criteria will be unveiled in the coming days. I can assure you that we are working as efficiently as possible so that the program can be rolled out and the money can be channelled to our beef and pork producers.
Mr. Chair, producers across this country have said that an exemption from the carbon tax would help them greatly during this pandemic. When I asked the minister about any data that was available for the impact the carbon tax had on agriculture, the answer I got was that this information was secret. Yesterday at committee, the minister said that this was a mistake and that this information has been public. My staff and I looked everywhere last night, as did journalists, and that information could not be found. Is that information actually available?