Cargill and Tyson are the two largest of three packing plants in Western Canada.

"They have those yearlings sitting in feedlots," MP Rick Casson, a member of the standing committee said. "They can use them to playoff against the independent feedlot operator."

He said that if the feedlot operator would not take the price they offered that day, they (Cargill and Tyson) used their own cattle. "They’ll starve the guy until he sells," he said.

When asked if Cargill and Tyson were abusing producers through marketplace dominance, the Canadian Commissioner of Competition, Sheridan Scott, waffled. To be dominant in the marketplace wasn’t illegal, she told the committee, suggesting there was nothing the Competition Bureau could do.

"There is a maxim in law called ‘res ipsa loquitur’, that the thing speaks for itself," MP David Kilgour pointed out, indicating what was happening should be enough for the commissioner to take action. The situation (on beef farms) has worsened and all of us around the table know it, he said.

"What on earth does it take for you people (Competition Bureau) to get off your butts?"

Said Scott: "Just because you have discrepancy does not mean you have facts that would point to criminal activity."

The Competition bureau stone walled the committee so much, Liberal Rose-Marie Ur, summing up the day, said "I’m just devastated sitting here today. I’m saddened. I can’t believe, as part of the government, that this is what we are hearing."

On February 24, Tyson and Cargill snubbed the committee hearings in Ottawa, angering MP David Kilgour. He wanted the government to send for these companies, their papers and records by summons.

Competition Bureau economist Richard Taylor wanted to know the significance of Tyson and Cargill "owning the feedlot." He wanted to know what percentage of the cattle in Alberta coming off feedlots were controlled by the two companies.

MP Dick Procter suggested 60 per cent.

Taylor said he understood that 35 per cent to 30 per cent of cattle went to the United States for slaughter. Procter said none of them go now.

Taylor said that the act of buying the yearlings had to be an anti-competitive act, but these are not extraordinary events. "They’re the typical predatory pricing," he said.

When Scott hedged again, Western MP Garry Breitkruez asked what other kind of evidence the Competition Bureau would need. "We’re fiddling while Rome burns," he said.

Scott told MP Larry McCormick that 400 people work with the competition bureau. "This is the same Competition Bureau that takes on the oil companies," he said, adding that people in the oil industry have lost their businesses, and "lives were destroyed because of the oil companies." He implied that the Competition Bureau did not help them.