Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When we go to the steering committee, to members, we have before us the legislative issues that need to be dealt with. You know, folks, we will continually have—as we have two or three now—motions in front of us that will be the topic of the day. We'll always come in and think that we had better get those done, that they're really important right now.
I know Mr. Easter has two or three farmers. I guess we can eat up a bunch of time talking about that. Back at the start of 2010 and actually in 2009 what was really important was the future of farming. We've spent I don't know how many meetings talking about that. It was really important, because we're losing farmers. We don't have enough coming on, and the industry is going to collapse. We heard it all, mainly from around the table. Now it's not important, and we're allowing everything to jump in front of it.
Through the summer people said, “I thought you guys were doing a report on the future of farming.” Well, we were. We travelled across the country. We've had multiple witnesses, but you know, we just never got it done. So I would encourage those at the steering committee today to get our priorities right. Get this report done, and then start to prioritize what comes next. To my mind, if we have one or two or three farmers who have an issue around the advance payments.... We will always have those sorts of issues. Maybe we can work that out somewhere other than at this committee.
Let's look instead at what's going to sustain the industry. What's important to farmers is what is going to sustain the industry and to keep it being a viable and strong industry into the future. I think, as Mr. Hoback and Mr. Valeriote have said, that is the type of discussion we should be having, because that's actually what is really important to the progressive farmers and to those who are going to be in the industry for many years to come.