Thanks to both of you for being here.
I'm going to target my questions to you, Mr. McAnerney. I'm hoping to have some time so my colleague Andrew can ask a few questions. I think he wanted to ask Dan a few questions.
It doesn't make any sense that here we have this overabundance of fruit in our country, and yet we have a struggling industry such as yours. I'd like to thank you and congratulate you for supporting the B.C. apple industry, because that's extremely important. It makes no sense that we've had, as you mentioned, 85 processing plants close in our country or move south. Obviously, this is a spinoff of NAFTA, because we've opened the borders and we have Washington State apples undercutting those of our farmers.
In 2007 our committee made some recommendations and members of all parties supported a recommendation that the federal government give preference to local farmers when making purchases for federal government institutions. The response from the government was that we'd have to be careful because of trade obligations. Assuming we could do this—and other countries have done this—would this help your industry, if there would be a certain amount of juice and other products from your industry that would be supported by federal procurement as part of a national food strategy?