Thank you very much, Chair. I would like to thank you for inviting me today, and I'm happy to be here with such a good group on this same subject.
Having met with many of you before, and certainly having spoken with many of the members of the committee on this issue, either in the House or in private, I am honoured that the minister has given me the task of moving forward the economic development piece in the five-county area of southern Ontario that grows tobacco.
I have taken it to the local municipal level and the mayors of the five counties and the communities within those counties, and to the economic development officers in those same areas, the Community Futures organizations, and the chambers of commerce, and to individual citizens. We've moved forward in a very quick fashion.
As backup, I would just like to cite a couple of quick comments made—and I won't take all of my time, because I know we have lots of witnesses questions today—by a couple of mayors. I continue to be as encouraged as when I left the Ottawa meeting. According to Mayor Acre from the Municipality of Bayham, we have the feds, the provinces, and the municipalities all in a straight line; and Mayor Molnar from Tillsonburg says he was impressed by the speed at which the meeting was brought together in the wake of the commitment made by the federal government.
We continue to meet. As a matter of fact, it's very timely to be here today, because we have our next task force meeting tomorrow morning in Tillsonburg. We continue to bring the municipalities together. They have now signed a memorandum of understanding among themselves, from an economic development point of view, to get the five counties and the municipal law officials within those five counties all rowing the boat in the same direction. As you know, given that some of you have been in that level of government, that's not always an easy thing to do—and at this moment, we continue to do it. The situation on the ground, in their mind, is very important, and they're willing to work together to help correct it, and we will continue to do so.
I recognize that some of the other questions here today will be about the producers and the contraband situation, and what we're doing about that. The answer is, of course, that we need a comprehensive way forward on this, and part of the answer is economic development. We will be left in the future with some economic development issues on the ground if we don't look at these at the same time; and it's the same thing with the contraband issue and the producers.
I'll leave it at that, and I look forward to your questions.