Thank you, Alex, very much, and thank you for always being so responsive and supportive. We appreciate that very much. Our board members across the county know you and appreciate what you do in trying to help us.
In 2008, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada very kindly provided some funds to us. We were able to do this major economic impact study, as I mentioned earlier, on our website, our incorporation, and our logo. We engaged Brent Warner, a retired B.C. ag person—whom you know, Alex—to travel across the country to get a feel for what was going on out there.
Over the last 15 or 20 years I've worked in every province in Canada, trying to help organizations organize farmers' markets. I've gone there under the auspices of Farmers’ Markets Ontario, which isn't fair to that organization because it doesn't really have the funds to be sending me across the country. I've helped do farmers' markets in Grand Falls, which is just a beautiful little market; in Bouctouche; and out in B.C.
We reached a point where we decided that Farmers’ Markets Canada would have to come into being to sort of carry the load, and it did, in 2006. We got some funding to be able to do some things, but then the funding dried up. We don't have access to dollars to be able to continue our programming. Those provincial associations out there, which are our members, are run by volunteers. They don't have big budgets.
The only provincial association with any kind of financial strength is Ontario, and that's thanks to the Government of Ontario. The Government of Ontario has been incredible over the last 20 years in terms of helping us with our market program. I think of Vankleek Hill and Kapuskasing, and places I've gone to help do markets. The Government of Ontario has been wonderful.
We're not getting that kind of help in other provinces, and we also need this help federally. I've asked our volunteer board for a teleconference; we were able to do some teleconferencing via a patron. We're trying to do our AGM. I'm getting discouraged, quite frankly—and Alex, I think you know that—but I don't want to give up.
Farmers’ Markets Canada is a really good organization. We've done some good stuff. We reach out to the people of Canada, but we need help doing that. It's easy to say go to some corporate sponsors and so on, but their funds are tight as well.
I think we're going to renew our approach to Minister Ritz and his staff to see, perhaps with some help, what we can do to access some funds to continue our work. Our work is really worthwhile. We're not going to give up. Even though we're dormant, we're not going to give up. We want to keep moving forward.