Thank you very much for being here.
I have a lot of questions, and I'm not sure if I'll have enough time. I'll fire away. Maybe if we don't finish them up, we could chat after the session.
The first one is on food security. We touched upon cucumbers and the fact that they're coming from outside the country. In B.C., for example, it's my understanding that before NAFTA we had in-season tariffs. We had over 2,000 onion producers; now there are six or seven. We've seen in Ontario that 60% of the apples are coming from outside of Ontario.
Does NAFTA not work for our food security? If that's the case, what can we do? Should we have some rapid response tariffs for when these products come in so that our producers can continue producing vegetables and feed our nation, and we get away from all those pesticides from Chile or Mexico or wherever?
The other one is on subsidies.
Mr. Smolik, I really enjoyed your presentation. I understand that specifically in the grains and oilseeds sector we'd like to have fewer subsidies from the Americans and the European Union. If we were to really push that, and I guess we have, it doesn't seem that there's any response from our neighbours. Also, how would that then affect our supply management? We're going to be invoking article XXVIII to protect our dairy farmers. We want to ensure we have a strong supply management system. How do you see that in the global context?
The other thing is...I had a very interesting discussion today with Senator Hugh Segal about some of his programs. We were talking about the idea of a working income tax benefit.
Would it be an immediate help to farmers if there was an income below which, if you didn't make that income, you got it topped up at income tax time? Say it was $30,000 and you didn't pay any income tax until you made over $30,000. If you only made $23,000, come income tax time the government cuts a cheque for $7,000. It's a guaranteed income, but it works at income tax time. I wonder if that could be an immediate help to farming families.
Grant, do you feel that the bureaucracy really is hindering the whole APF process, regardless of the political party in power? Is that one of the major stumbling blocks?
I'll stop. Let's see how many answers we can get. Whoever wants to start....