Thank you for the question.
First of all, I was out making some maple syrup on the weekend. It's very fine Ontario maple syrup, so it's not just in Quebec.
We produce a lot of products even for the domestic market. We've seen a huge growth, especially around the urban centres, with people wanting the hundred mile circles and so on. There's a lot more local production for local consumption. There is a market for it, and I think a number of farmers and farmers' markets are doing very well. There's a lot of growth in that. But we have been blessed with a very rich land and a large ability to produce. That's why, with a smaller population, there'll always be the export side as well. I think there is room for both.
As producers, one of the challenges we have, especially in western Canada, is that we continue to ship large volumes of low-value commodities out. We're looking for ways to add more value. For example, if grain were at $300 a tonne and you were paying $50 a tonne to ship it, we'd rather see some value added, because the freight would have become such a high percentage of the cost, which puts us at a competitive disadvantage with other countries closer to water. What we would like to do is add more value to it, so that you're shipping products that are worth $1,000 or $2,000 a tonne; the freight then becomes a smaller percentage.
There are many areas we think we can move on that will put more money back into the grassroots. There are more jobs locally, there is more production, the service industries around those things work. We think there's a lot of potential, if we can move in that direction more than just being shippers of low-value products continually. We think this is one important step to help out producers.