Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Before I start—and I'm a bit reluctant to do this—it seems evident from so many years of experience here that a lot of people don't know where Newfoundland and Labrador is located, so I brought some maps. I actually highlighted the Newfoundland part, just in case people can't read. I believe most of the members know where to find Newfoundland and Labrador, but perhaps some of the planners who set this up really don't know, so I'd like you to take that back.
I've had this experience from consultations long before this committee came along. We had consultations on the BRM, from the federal-provincial arrangement that we've had. FIMCLA—we've had to get our politicians to try to get the people to come to Newfoundland and Labrador. So it is frustrating.
A lot more than the people you're seeing today would like to appear at these consultations, but it costs just as much to come from Newfoundland and Labrador to Halifax as it is to go from St. John's to London. It's very expensive.
Anyway, I would like to proceed right into my valuable time. I guess my big concern in not having a presence within the mindset of people who are involved in agriculture is the fact that people are not aware of what's happening in agriculture in Newfoundland and Labrador. We do have a significant industry, relatively speaking, an industry that's worth a half a billion dollars and supported by 6,200 jobs. It has experienced good growth over the last three years. The industry is definitely poised to take advantage of some new and emerging opportunities to increase that growth.
We can look at the industrial milk quota, where we've received 32 million litres of allocation that will double the industry from a value of $100 million and double the number of people employed to a couple of thousand.
We can talk about a fur industry that three years ago was only worth less than $1 million. Today it's worth $80 million and projected to move up to about $200 million over the next couple of years.
We can look at the industry around life sciences, particularly our northern dairies, and what we can do with nutraceuticals and functional foods.
We're looking in areas of the vegetable industry. We're only producing 10% of what the consumer is purchasing in the province.
We look at things like the livestock, the red meat industry, where consumer purchasing power is purchasing somewhere in the order of about $160 million from a provincial scale. Because we don't have an infrastructure in terms of slaughterhouse facilities, in terms of red meat inspection regimes, we can't get our product into the revenue stream. We can't get into the wholesalers, the retailers. We cannot export red meat products out of Newfoundland and Labrador. There is something wrong with that system. If you can't get into the revenue stream, how can you create an industry?
The new rationalization in terms of healthy eating, a healthy environment, and food safety, food security, is certainly driving the industry to the point—especially in terms of nutraceuticals, functional foods. We talk about the health food industry. There's tremendous growth. An industry in the life sciences is worth billions and billions of dollars in North America alone.
Certainly in terms of what agriculture and agrifood can do in terms of sustaining and growing the rural economy in Newfoundland and Labrador, of course, is the ultimate in rationalization for us and where we want to go. We see tremendous opportunity and we want to take advantage of it. Of course, we look to the agricultural policy framework to do some of that.
We've moved forward I think on the basis of good strategy—