Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank all the people who have made these excellent presentations.
I'd like to start by asking a couple of questions of Maple Leaf.
What we've heard is that we're advancing toward a state of crisis in the pork industry in Canada. I think if you look at the question of Nova Scotia you'll see we're in the third stage of that crisis situation. It's very worrying. You mentioned in your documents the Berwick plant. Without the Berwick plant, the hog industry in western Nova Scotia, in the Annapolis Valley, is dead. It's very difficult to see how it would survive, how Olymel or anybody else could take over that amount of production at a price that would permit them to operate in that area.
I understand the challenges you have, and I also understand the efficiencies in that plant in secondary production, that it's currently underutilized. Can you give some assurance or some indication to the farmers of the Annapolis Valley as to the probability of that plant operating in the future and to the timing of your decisions on this facility?