Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing this morning, and we look forward to our time today in the province.
To our friend in the maple syrup business, I am also a farmer, and I come from an area where we produce maple syrup, but in smaller quantities.
The recurring issue that has come up from time to time as we have travelled across the country is this whole issue of over-regulation in Canada and under-regulation of product coming into Canada.
I want you to know we've taken note of what you said this morning in terms of product coming into Canada, and how it comes under less scrutiny than our own product we produce here. That's something we need to look at very seriously for the benefit of young farmers. What we need to see is some sort of an emerging theme in how we look forward in terms of our programming to ensure there is a generation of farmers to replace us.
Those of us who live in other provinces—and I live in the province of Ontario—look at Quebec as probably having a premier program in the ASRA program. I'm going to put this to you, Mr. Martin, in terms of the ASRA program and you as a young farmer. If those continuing programs similar to that program were to be there, would that give you enough incentive to want to go on?
I want to go on to ask you to respond to the issue, because you talked about mentoring. I've seen a program proposal that would see young farmers being able to access ownership of an operation, or perhaps a father would deem his million-dollar operation to be something he wants to pass on to his son, but there's a taxable issue. The son would take it over, the father would hold the mortgage for 20 years, he would pay off the mortgage over 20 years at $50,000 a year—and we're using numbers here as an example.
If we could have tax laws accommodate that, would that type of program be something that would be interesting to young farmers because the father could continue in a mentoring role? It could be anyone else for that mattter, but in this case it could be a father or a friend. I'm wondering if that type of program would be something, and if it were a tax measure, then perhaps this committee needs to look at how we address this issue with the government in terms of changing tax laws to accommodate that. How do you feel about that?