I have an opinion on that, Mr. Easter.
The incentive of the 20¢ that you allude to causes us a lot of concern. When we first started to discuss this venture eight months ago with the federal government, basically NRCan, the commitment we got from them at that point in time was that the federal government was in for the long haul. You embark down a road on that word just to turn around and there's false information, or misinformation, there. They've turned around now and pulled back the 4¢ incentive they initially provided for the long haul, whatever that was in their minds, and then gave us 20¢ for three years. You're absolutely right, it causes us a lot of concern.
To us there's a big disconnect there, in that they commit to this 20¢ for three years, but in the meantime they've mandated a 2% biofuel content for 2012. That's four and a half years from now. In our minds, we're aware of the risks, but we feel that once the public becomes fully aware of the benefit of biodiesel—and I won't speak to fuel ethanol—I think they'll embrace it.
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, last year ran two transit buses on biodiesel. The outcome of that was they increased the efficiency in the diesel engine between 3.5% and 5%. They attribute that to the lubricity component of the biodiesel. If you take that 3.5% and 5% and you apply it to all sectors of our economy, be it marine, the agricultural sector, the transportation sector—If you take isolated diesel units that are running generating units in isolated communities and apply that efficiency, the improvement of between 3.5% and 5%—and it's written down by the City of Saskatoon--the benefits are profound with the longevity of diesel equipment and with the benefits of biodiesel. This is what I tried to allude to in my comments about education in terms of the public embracing something that we think has benefits down the road—not in the short term, but in the long term.
To come back to your question, we are very concerned about the same risks that you have expressed, but are frustrated with what we deem to be the misinformation provided by a government agency on how they were going to support an industry that is just starting to blossom and set a date that is so far out that the ADMs of the world that I allude to are just going to slide in underneath us. It's an opportunity for the petroleum industries to basically carve their niche out. As I said, they view this as a direct competition and they view this as a portion of profits they have lost.