Agriculture committee  The apprentice tax credit is a benefit as well. It's in place now, and we encourage that it stay.

Agriculture committee  The danger is that we're trying to encourage apprentices to come into our field and we want to create and allow an environment in which we can pay them well for their services. The training costs we have are astronomical. What we have to commit right now to specialized training f

Agriculture committee  The only comment I've heard from our sales team—and I second everything that's been said—is that we find Farm Credit to be our number two provider of financing and we get along very well with them. They do a good job for us and we're very happy to have them there. The only comm

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  The other concern that farmers have is when they're purchasing higher-technology equipment, equipment that comes with global positioning and advanced computer systems, they're depreciating those at the rate of the iron. It's a computer system, so if they spend $20,000 in technolo

Agriculture committee  And the PTO turns backwards in them.

Agriculture committee  Our biggest concern on the parts issue with the Chinese ones right now is that we're asking where are customers going to get parts and what's their value going to be in five years? That's our concern as well.

Agriculture committee  And also about not being able to supply parts for them. We've run into a couple of situations where customers want to trade those Kubotas in, and one of the customers couldn't get filters for it and we wouldn't take it on trade, because it was one of these grey market tractors. A

Agriculture committee  We don't see a conversion cost. In speaking with the people involved in the program at Kemptville College, University of Guelph, there are no costs to the changeover to biodiesel or ethanol-type diesels. They're running those. They burn more cleanly and more efficiently, and ther

Agriculture committee  Yes. That is the perspective we have to start from. We are seeing a lot of optimism because of the ethanol plants—positive discussions with the plants they are proposing down in the Prescott area, and seeing, hopefully, some optimism coming out of the Cornwall one—just those thi

Agriculture committee  Our first approach to this was that I brought a guidance counsellor into our dealership and explained that we are not looking for failures in the school system to change tires. We need top-quality, highly trained kids coming out of school, who want to advance. With the new techn

Agriculture committee  We're seeing that right now in the Winchester area. There is a small business called the Tri-County Protein Corporation. They extract oil from soybeans and are actively seeking markets to distribute their byproducts, which include a biodiesel or the oils generated from that. This

Agriculture committee  Ethanol seems to be driving a lot of optimism. I would like to confirm something about the fragility our industry has just come through the last several years. When we say it is getting better, it is because it has been so bad for so long that anything right now seems better.

Agriculture committee  I know that Deere sends out the tractors from the factory with biodiesel in them. We have a letter on that from Deere. Also, Deere is sponsoring a project at Kemptville College of the University of Guelph, near here, on a biodiesel program. We've been active in that one as well

Agriculture committee  I'll start that and John will finish it for me. Where we believe the issue arises is in commodity prices, and as the commodity prices reach levels that make it acceptable for our customers to purchase and operate their equipment and farms, the need for subsidies seems less of a