It's interesting working, as the centre does, with some larger processors and large farm producers. As to the comments Ted made about the bias against small, they feel it's a bias against large. Their challenges are that they're trying to reach the marketplace by investing in technologies and investing in land. Rarely have they been given it, so it's a sense of how you adjust to the marketplace.
To your question, we at the centre would say that as you look to where the market opportunities are, you will have to scale up to match them and to be competitive; or you scale to the activity level that you're in, whether a niche market, an organic market, or something that's very regional. Why have thousands and thousands of acres, or thousands and thousands of capacity at the processing level?
On the other hand, you have to be efficient. You have to be competitive. The challenge that Ted's referring to with the small abattoirs is that a lot of these small guys over time have not been competitive. They have not met the standards. These are not federal standards that they have to meet. These are provincial standards, and there's a large argument about federal and provincial standards being equivalent. But, they have to do this. And are they doing it, and do people really want it?
On the other hand, as markets shift—and Ted's company is a great example—there are opportunities to both enter the market and scale up. Are we always assisting that? The challenge for the dairy sector is that because of the way the system is, it's not as agile as maybe some people would like it to be. As for the reference to artisan cheese, there are opportunities to create artisan cheese, and maybe scale up to a certain level. The question is, can you expand beyond that? That will be the challenge for the dairy sector, and it will be the challenge for other supply-managed sectors.
On the scale side, our concern is that if Canada wants to participate on a global basis and be competitive, it has to have sufficient scale with some of its processors and a number of its producers, and the entire supply chain has to work together at that scale level. If it's looking to a more domestic market or a very unusual market, it scales back again and they still have to be competitive.