Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thanks to everyone for being here tonight. It's a lovely evening out there. I'm sure there's work you'd like to be doing back home.
I'd like to talk a little further about this issue of regional variation and flexibility at the provincial level. I'm sure most of you are aware that in Canada, constitutionally, certain jurisdictions are given to the provincial governments—health care and education, for example—and others are given exclusively to the federal government, national defence being the most obvious example. But there are others, like agriculture, that are actually shared. So constitutionally it's a shared responsibility between the federal government and the provinces. It's something I think people across the country struggle with.
Regional variation is good when your commodity is being treated more proactively in your province than somewhere else. The flip side is that in Ontario, for instance--and I'm from rural eastern Ontario—there are producers who are competing with farmers in Quebec who benefit from a more generous program in Quebec than we have in Ontario. So those farmers are crying foul, saying, this isn't fair; it's bad enough I have to compete with Americans, who have a more generous program, but now it's even within Canada.
So I think that's the other side of this issue, which is that in Prince Edward Island, for example, obviously potatoes are a major crop and that's something for which this province would probably be in the lead in terms of programs. But if you were producing something else that tends to come from somewhere else--I think we saw that recently, when Alberta topped up some of these 60-40 programs immediately and other provinces could not.
So here's my specific question regarding Prince Edward Island. As a small province with a relatively small population, with the cost of developing a large range of programs to service a large number of sectors in the agricultural community, particularly some of the smaller ones, is the provincial level the best place to do that? We chatted earlier today that possibly the federal government should play a larger role in these areas, including the dollars to make sure there's a level playing field across the country and that we can compete internationally.
Scott, you were the one who raised this issue initially. I wonder if you have any thoughts on that. The government is going to be working on some replacement programs here. Do you have any thoughts you'd like on the record?