Thank you for the question.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada organization has a little logo, this little white cow on a blue background, and they are trying to brand Canadian dairy products with that little white cow. The trouble is this. It makes an awful lot of sense, and Canadian beef outside Canada has had great response to their red cow on a red maple leaf, but here in Canada, unfortunately, we seem to have a situation where 25% of the population doesn't care what it has to pay for the products, and then we have 50% who are starting to look around, and unfortunately we have a 25% group of people who can afford only the very cheapest. So we have only a small market for which we can charge almost anything for a product as long as it's branded and they know the background of it. The other 50% or 75% do not really care.
This morning I was fortunate enough to sit in this room when you made the distinction about your area. You said that at one point in time you had people come to holiday in your area from Toronto, and now they all seem to be going to Cuba and Mexico. Why are they doing that? Because the value is the same.
But why is the value the same? Because unfortunately, where they have these areas in Mexico and Cuba, they are still sitting on that little tiny island, that protected little resort, and they don't see what is really going on outside, where the poverty really is. And that poverty is where we, as a western society, are going on holiday to. We are going to those resorts on the backs of these poor people. That is the one thing that we have to get through the heads of the Canadian consumers, that what we are providing here in the western world is provided on the backs of primary producers, who need to make a living. It doesn't matter how or what, they need to make a living just as much as the Canadian auto worker in one of the CAW plants, who makes $35 an hour.
In my case, in dairy, we are calculated at $15 an hour maximum. I have to have skills. I have to have somewhat of an education to make sure that at the end of the year I can do my tabulation that says, yes, my farm was profitable. The guys at the plant just see the wheels rolling by and don't need any skills. All they need, in essence, is a little bit of training to apply this bolt.