Mr. Chairman, I have a different issue, very briefly, and that's country of origin labelling.
As you know, the United States now is really moving forward on dealing with this issue. We've been raising this at the Canadian Horticultural Council for the last two years. This issue of landed value to which 51% or more is added to the cost--I think many of you are probably well aware of that--is an issue with farming communities and should be an issue for everybody.
I'll take the example of the amount of product coming in from China at this stage, landing in this particular case in Vancouver. It could be, in the east, from Thailand or wherever it comes from, landing maybe in Montreal. Once that is packaged, after being shipped in bulk, very often the cost to package and store that product exceeds that 51% margin, and so it can therefore be labelled as a product of Canada. To me, that is deceiving the consumer. You know there are problems with heavy metals in China. In the event that we have a problem with some of that product, and it says “product of Canada” on it, that is not healthy--and no pun intended--for the future of the farming community, because the consumer will likely say that if it says “product of Canada”, it must have been grown here.
We're asking this committee to take this forward and see if you can fast-track this a bit to make sure that if it's labelled “product of Canada”, it is in fact grown or produced in this country, and not in another one.
That's basically my concern, Mr. Chairman and panel members.