Thank you.
I guess in this day and age we seem to believe that the only way to get out of this impasse is to open up new markets. The government is doing that, and that's a good thing, but at the same time, if folks are losing money, we can start doing something. Perhaps we should be going in that direction in regard to captive supply, especially if our trading partners are doing that. Hopefully, as a committee, we'll have a chance to look at that and study that issue in the fall.
Food sovereignty is a topic that's coming up a lot these days. I'm in the process of doing this tour across the country as we try to put together a report that my party will present to our government in regard to a national food policy. It's the whole idea of control over food versus trade, how we do both, and how we can still be a trading nation and yet have control over our food supply. As an example, I spent some time in Atlantic Canada just a few weeks ago, and the beef producers there are not producing enough to feed Atlantic Canada. They're losing money, but we can't sort of captivate that market there because of the free flow of beef.
Dwight, you and I talked a bit about this thing called supply management and whether it is applicable to the beef industry. As we look at being able to feed ourselves, we have to look at this whole idea of whether we can have control of our feed supply. So I'd like some comments on that.
Third, as we work towards this, we're now faced with the possibility of having genetically modified alfalfa released into the environment. It has been approved by Health Canada and Environment Canada, and it's just awaiting registration. We have the push by the biotech industry to bring in genetically modified wheat. I'm being told that if we do that, for example, our markets will suffer, because there won't be as many buyers for Canadian wheat. There's the problem of contamination with alfalfa. The Saskatchewan Organic Directorate, for example, came out strongly against this. Should we be putting a stop to further genetically modified organisms in our country to protect our markets and also to protect the organic food industry?
Those are my questions. Maybe we can just start and see if we have time to answer them in seven minutes.
Thank you.