Thank you.
Thank you for being here. I'm going to start with a general question. Then I have some specific ones.
Wayne mentioned that U.S. subsidies are somewhere around $180 billion this last year. We've always known that the Americans tend to pump more money into their farming sector on a per capita basis than we do. I just completed my own tour across the country, based on food sovereignty and food security. A couple of major themes that came out were that there's a tremendous number of local initiatives--some of you referred to that today--and the other thing was the whole idea that in some instances, perhaps, trade has impacted negatively on farmers. We've seen that with the way the dumping that's allowed in Canada has hurt our fruit industry.
This committee a number of years ago made a recommendation, supported by all members of all parties, that we should be encouraging local procurement for federal government institutions. The response we got from the department was that we have to be careful, because of certain trade obligations, about countervail duties. At the same time, I know there are states in the United States that do this. Illinois, for example, has said that by the year 2020, 20% of the procurement for local state institutions will come from local farmers.
I'm wondering in general whether somebody is studying or looking at how the Americans are able to inject this amount of money and still stay within trade agreements. I get the feeling that we're afraid to do some of this because of the trade agreements. Maybe that's just a general question. Are we starting to look at this to see how we can support local producers, do programs such as local procurement for federal institutions, and at the same time somehow keep our trade agreements?
That's the first question.