Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the guests for coming and for having patience today to sit before us.
In Europe now there's a big push to minimize the effect on the environment when you're transporting food. They call it the green footprint, and it's recognized big-time. It's pushed by governments and retailers.
As a previous vegetable grower, my biggest disappointment is seeing Canada going in the opposite direction. I see it coming from the retailers with their distribution systems whereby they've started pushing farmers to ship to some big distribution system away from their local markets. It seems we're going in the opposite direction.
How can we have reasonably cheap food for consumers but somehow encourage local farm produce in the retail stores? Right now there is a push for farm markets, but at the end of the day, 80% of the food is going through retail organizations. How can we, as a government, encourage that change and maybe follow a little bit what Europe is doing?