I call this meeting to order.
We kick off our study today on high input costs facing Canadian farmers. I'm really glad we have with us today Bob Friesen--no stranger to the committee--with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture; James Mann and Glenn Caleval with the Farmers of North America Inc.; Pierre Lemieux and Gilbert Lavoie from UPA; and Richard Phillips and Leo Meyer from the Grain Growers of Canada.
I welcome all of you and thank you for taking the time out to come to committee and present. This is an important study. For the last few months we've been hearing about this issue, about where the price of input costs is going, particularly for fertilizer as we're coming up onto the spring season.
With that, I'm going to open it up to opening comments. Please keep your comments under ten minutes—and we'll hold you to that—so we can have plenty of time for discussion around the committee table.
Mr. Friesen, would you kick us off, please?