I guess I won't ask you about the tree fruit industry.
Mine is a general question. This a theme that has come up over the years I've been on this committee. We've often had farmers like you appear here on various themes, and the plea has often been that we need a level playing field. I remember one pork producer who said, “Please help us compete against foreign governments.” How can we do that? Obviously you folks are successful. You run your successful businesses. There are others, perhaps smaller farms, that aren't as successful and that perhaps need some kind of assistance to keep them on a level playing field, especially if we want rural Canada, as we know it, to survive.
We know that the United States, for example, heavily subsidize their agriculture industry through their farm bill. Last week we heard that they recently injected $300 million to help out the chicken farmers, who are basically going bankrupt. So they're always finding money, and our folks, of course, then have to compete with this. We saw last week that, sure, the prices of chickens from the United States are low, because they're having a lot of problems and they're getting this money. So we always have this argument, I guess, about competing with others. We see the same thing with the European Union.
What can we do? We have all these programs, and we've talked about the pros and cons of AgriStability, AgriInvest, and AgriInsurance. What should our government be doing federally, in cooperation with provincial governments, to keep that field level in general? Or should we be doing something else to ensure that you folks can get out there and survive and make sure that at the end of the day you've made a profit on your business? We know a lot of folks survive because they have off-farm income.
That's a philosophical question, but I think it's very pertinent. Maybe we'll start with Mr. Schneckenburger and just work our way down.
I'll stop there.