Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.
I want to first just quickly address some of the comments made by Mr. Easter.
Our government is very concerned about the situation faced by our farmers, and we are working hard to ensure the future of our farmers. The first issue is opening up marketing access. I look at my colleagues over here, who are looking at studying competitiveness issues, looking to study excessive regulations, and our Liberal friends are trying to see that pushed as far into the future as possible. I say to Mr. Easter and his colleagues, get out of the way of progress and let the government do something. Let's not try to hold things up.
Anyway, I would like to ask some of our witnesses a couple of questions. Mr. Vincent, I ask if you would start. We have a bit of a common background. I come from a hog farming background myself. When I was a young man, we had one of the largest hog farms around, about 1,600 farrow to finish. By the time my dad got out of the business seven or eight years ago, it was one of the smaller operations around, so there were a lot of changes in the industry, of course, over that period of time.
But I would also like to give Mr. Dessureault and Mr. Rouillard a chance to answer the same question, so I'll ask the question to all three of you. I've asked a number of our witnesses on this particular study the same question. I'm very concerned about the future of farming, particularly for young farmers looking to get into farming. So here's a very blunt question, first of all. Do you see a future for young farmers looking to get into your industries, and what needs to happen to ensure that?