Well, I'm not advocating anything. I look at myself as doing what I can for the agriculture industry. I'm an agriculturalist. I'm a farmer. I still have my farm in Saskatchewan. I was a practising farmer before I went back to university. I look at myself as having no vested interest except to try to help position the Canadian agricultural industry to be as competitive as it can be.
Yes, as a citizen of the world, I am concerned about food costs. I see, now, rapidly escalating food prices in some areas of the world. I see the problem in Mexico, where they don't even produce any ethanol to speak of, and the price of tortillas has jumped four times within a month, and they've had to put caps on. I see the prices in China. I just got back from China last month, and there the price of pork has gone up by 55% and the price of cooking oil by 35%.
This is going to happen to all the people around the world, and it will affect mostly the people with the lowest incomes, including the people with the lowest incomes here in Canada. If anything interferes with that, I think there should be a good reason for it. I don't see a good reason here for this. I don't think it's going to help us.
It will help the owners of farmland. If you have a farm, like I have, yes, farmland is going to be worth a lot more, just like houses in Calgary and Saskatoon are. But it's not helping the industry, I don't believe.