Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak to all of you today about young farmers and the future of farming from the perspective of the 4-H program in Canada.
We've been given 10 minutes for our presentation, but for those of you who are former 4-H'ers and know the art of public speaking, once our 4-H members start talking it might be difficult to stop them talking. But we'll try to keep within the timelines.
l'd like to start off by introducing my colleagues who will be participating in today's presentation.
Ashley Knapton is a 4-H member from Almonte, Ontario. Her family's dairy farm started six years ago, and they milk 20 purebred Holstein cattle.
For those of you in the dairy industry, you might think we're stacking it up for the dairy industry, because we also have Gillian MacDougall here. She is a current 4-H member, vice-president of the Quebec 4-H Council. She is vice-chair of the Canadian 4-H Council youth advisory committee, and she is currently between studies at university and is helping out on her family dairy farm near Ormstown, Quebec. And before the questions come, they have Holstein and Jersey.
On Gillian's left is Ken Lancastle. He is the communications and marketing manager of the Canadian 4-H Council.
We were invited to do our presentation on Friday, so I've been polling colleagues from across the country. The thoughts we are going to share with you have been compiled from feedback we've received from some of our stakeholders across the country. They include our 4-H members, 4-H leaders, 4-H sponsors, and they include friends of 4-H. It's a wide cross-section of who, in fact, we've gleaned some information from.
I'm going to turn it over now to Ken Lancastle, to talk about 4-H a little bit.