Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, gentlemen, thank you all for coming today and for giving your information and testifying. It's always exciting to see this industry come forward. As a farmer, I get really excited when we start talking about the prospects of renewable fuels, and then biotechnology and alternative uses for my crops.
One thing is that as a farmer I always have to get my mindset changed. I've gone from the days when we were growing food to the days when we're growing starch, protein, and other raw ingredients for all sorts of products; it's not just food anymore. That's really positive for farmers and for the next generation of farmers, because all of a sudden we're going to see revenue being generated from different streams outside the food stream.
When we see surpluses such as we've seen, for example, in the U.S., where they had huge surpluses of corn and were dumping them around the world.... That just killed my farm. It killed a lot of young farmers and erected a big barrier for farmers coming into this industry. If we can do other things with product and utilize it, it's a win-win for everybody in the agricultural sector and for rural Canada.
One thing I am disappointed with, and it may be because of my excitement that I'm disappointed, is that it seems to take so long. In 2006, we were thinking that this is coming. We had seen what was going on in the U.S., and everybody was excited with the plants being built here. But it seems that in Canada it is taking forever.
Why does it take such a long time? I'm sure there are probably good reasons, but maybe you could help us understand why it's taking so long, especially in both levels.