To begin with the first part—about what we encompass—in the case of my particular provincial association, our membership goes from the people who wash the dirt off a carrot and put it in a bag right through to that full meal preparation you were talking about, whether it's fresh-packed or otherwise.
The biggest areas of processing in this country are killing cows and pigs and cutting them up and putting them in a box. That is the biggest sector. Southern Alberta is a very important part of what happens in that area.
As to where the growth is going to come from in the Canadian industry, you have to put it into the perspective of being in a world market situation. In all honesty, we're a speck on the butt. We have 37 million people here; we're a very small country. We keep talking about becoming dominant, but what we really have to do in this country is become the best guerrillas out there and pick the niches.
I have a very good example. In Alberta we have a company that has become the largest gluten-free baker in North America. It does a great deal of business off the Internet and ships by courier. It's the biggest user of courier services in western Canada. It ships into the United States every day and is now branching into Europe on a similar type of basis, using courier services.
The world is changing in terms of what we can do. This is a very specific niche where we can be an expert and use Canadian agricultural outputs, although there are still some difficulties with it. He cannot get some product in Alberta that he needs; it has to come from Manitoba. We have some barriers to those kinds of things as well.
In sum, growth will be in niches. We react to what our customers want, particularly on the retail side. They are the ones who are talking to the consumer—not our people, and not the farmers. The retailers tell us what it is and where the next generation is. Sometimes they create it, as Loblaws has done with their “Insider's Report”; sometimes it comes from the demand that comes through various organizations.