I do as well appreciate your concerns and your desire to hear what we have to say, but Canada has a cheap-food policy. Canadians spend less than 10% of their income on food. You know, 40 years ago or 20 years ago it was a lot higher than that, and it's going down. We have a cheap-food policy. That's the largest significant problem that we have to overcome.
Beyond that, though, I think the Canadian government can play a role. In my closing remarks about the intangibles, I mentioned that Canadian farmers haven't had the level of respect from the Canadian public that I think we deserve. I think you as individual MPs could give some help along the way. Just saying that we're here representing Canadian farmers, who are good people in a good, honest, clean livelihood, would build up that respect. Then the Canadian public can start looking for Canadian-produced products.
It's a very difficult question to answer, but it's huge. What we've just seen in the last month with the dog food and pets dying all over North America is again cheap-food policy. Chinese wheat that was contaminated is killing our pets. What a great opportunity for the government to say they're going to support Canadian producers--but we didn't hear that, right? I haven't heard that kind of exclamation from my Canadian government, or from any of my MPs. I didn't hear any MPs stand up to say that if we'd had Canadian cellulose, or whatever it is that was in that dog food....
That's what I was talking about in relation to the respect for the farmers, the support from the government. I'm not talking about subsidies; I'm talking about attitudes and the fact that we're now generations away from the farm. To me leadership from my government, and from individuals within that government, would be a simple solution.