Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks, gentlemen, for coming here.
Mr. Wiseman, I don't know whether there's a connection with the previous Wiseman, but anyway, thanks very much for coming here from Newfoundland and Labrador.
I have a couple of points.
Mr. Gordon, you touched on a program and you talked about regions. My question is, do you think the government should be looking at, instead of one national program, having three or four regional programs with comparisons? You can answer that.
I'll ask another question to Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Boudreau.
Mr. Wiseman, you mentioned $1,500, and I believe I heard you correctly that the whole province basically received that under the CITI program. Are you suggesting that farmers should qualify for a program because of where they live, or because they actually qualify under the criteria of the program?
Mr. Boudreau, you talked about the cost of production and regional aspects. I'll use an example. Where I farm, I've grown corn for corn silage to feed my cattle, but I can't make money growing it as a cash crop. So when you talk about the grain industry here and tie it in with having a regional food supply, you know, people live in the Rocky Mountains, but you can't grow crops there.
My question is, should we be subsidizing farmers to grow grain where you can't grow grain profitably, and things like that? Maybe a number of you might answer that, but I think you get the direction that I'm trying to go in here. I can't disagree with having a regional food supply, but at the same time, there has to be a reasonable expectation by both those on the production side and on the government side to protect that.
So there are a number of questions. I'll let Mr. Gordon answer first.