Agriculture committee  Yes. We've been doing that for the last six years. I'm sorry, I am going to speak to you in French.

Agriculture committee  This year, we are celebrating our sixth anniversary. We have a small market in the City of Sherbrooke. Producers make around $3 million in six years. So we make $500,000 a year, which is enough to keep six sheep and beef producers. And we have grass-fed beef. We pay attention to that.

Agriculture committee  If I may, I would like to say that the major challenge in agriculture is that our producers are no longer used to producing all year round in order to sell their products to major supermarkets, or large markets, such as hospitals. In Sherbrooke's Marché de solidarité régionale, we have trouble getting producers to provide us with vegetables all year round.

Agriculture committee  With the exception of Saskatchewan that has a lot of them, local communities used to be able to sustain themselves in the past. Actually, our dependence on export or import makes us slightly more vulnerable. We have put our resources aside and we choose to focus on exports because they are profitable.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. It would be interesting for the members of the committee to try to picture the future. We have to go back to the foundation of agriculture, which is to feed the community. If we have a surplus, it is easy to sell abroad. But right now, we are selling what we have too much of, the five million hogs in Quebec, for example, and we are buying what we could grow locally, such as garlic, cucumber, cabbage, tomatoes, and so on.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I would first like to thank you for inviting us to participate in this study on agriculture in Canada. I would like to introduce Laurier Busque, a former professor from the University of Ottawa. I am the President of Les AmiEs de la Terre de l’Estrie and the president and founder of markets for regional solidarity.