Thank you very much. We'd had some great comments today. I wish we had more time, but we've actually extended over.
I have just a couple of things to add.
Mike, in terms of your comment about the industry basically having the lead role, I know as a producer I came through the BSE crisis in 2003 and it kicked the daylights out of me and a lot of other people. Sometimes when you get frustrated, you want to blame somebody or put all the blame on the government. Government has a role in this, but so does the industry and so does society in getting this mindset.
There is no specific cheap food policy in this country. No provincial or federal government has that. But it's artificially there, and society puts it there. Society needs to start to walk the talk. If they say they want to support agriculture, they have to do it when they walk into the grocery store or the local market, or whatever.
There's one other thing I'd like some comments on—and we don't have time to hear any answers on this, but I sent a card around, or you can send your comments to our clerk. We've had a bit of a theme here about the Competition Bureau, and there seems to be some opinion out there that it's maybe not using the tools it has to the full degree. There's even some other play out there, including from myself, wondering if we should give them some more power. So I'd like to hear some comments on that.
There's something that we always have to keep in mind. I fully support, as do most people in this room—in fact, probably all the people here—somehow protecting our domestic food supply. But as a taxpayer, just using my taxpayer's hat and throwing my farmer's hat and my politician's hat away—I cannot support subsidizing exports. Somehow we have to come up with a way to separate the two, and if any of you have some comments on that, I would be very happy to hear them and I think the rest of the committee would.
Thank you very much for being here on a nice day.
We would ask you to please vacate the tables as quickly as possible and for next round of witnesses to please come to the table right away—and again I urge our members to take a leading role and get back to the table in five minutes.
Thank you.