Thank you very much.
Gentlemen, you may be aware that there has been a severe drought this year in the northwestern part of Ontario. The Federation of Agriculture has actually written to both the federal and provincial ministers, advising that the drought conditions were so severe that they would like the area to be declared a disaster area. It has meant that some farmers are required to get hay from the Americans. And it's the same geographical area; you can't tell the difference if you're in Minnesota or that part of northwestern Ontario.
We're talking about inspections here and, because of the policies that CFIA has, about raising the cost from a $70-per-certificate inspection to $450. Of course, that raises the cost of the hay to almost $10 a bale, even though if you went through a cereal leaf beetle area in southern Ontario at this time and delivered it to Manitoba, you wouldn't have to get it inspected. So there are some very amazing anomalies here. I know you're familiar with the case in which the USDA has already cleared the area and certified it to be free of cereal leaf beetle.
When we talk about process, either of international cooperation or assisting farmers in that, we're talking about a huge additional expense, an unconscionable amount of time delay, and just the whole system of putting someone through that when we know they're in an emergency situation. Knowing that it's free of this pest and has been so certified, the farm community wonders why, when you have a homogeneous quantity, it has to be bureaucratized and be certified each time, even though it's from the same source.
Could either one of you perhaps address that?