Thank you.
I would second Ryan's comments that without the vision or a target to aim for we cannot make decisions today. We cannot possibly make decisions without knowing what the end goal is to be. There are really serious questions about ag policy in Canada. Are we an exporting nation? Are we a supply-protected nation? Are we focused on a cheap food policy? Are we protecting future food supply? Those are the first questions that must be answered by this government and by this committee. When we have the answers, we then can quite easily design programs and goals that will lead us to that end vision.
On regional differences, absolutely, our country is great and it is wide and it is large. What works for 10,000-acre grain farms in Saskatchewan does not work for 50-sow farrow-to-finish farms in P.E.I. There are different needs. I recognize that standards and principles must be met and matched across a national program, but we absolutely have to have the flexibility to create programs that will meet those regional and production variances that do exist in a country this large. It's easy to design a program for Ontario or Quebec or Saskatchewan or even a program for P.E.I., but in a national program we have to recognize the scope of the country. Vision is critical, and regionality is simply a function of the size and the variance of our country.