Welcome everyone to the agriculture committee today.
Today is a bit of a unique day. I consider it a privilege for the committee to have the people with us who we do.
Before we get to the participants of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum, I do want to acknowledge the folks from the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan. These people are representatives who wanted to come in, I think, to see how they're going to transition their farms to their younger people, as that is all part of it.
I do welcome our guests and visitors who are with us today.
Colleagues, as I mentioned, today is unique, but if it isn't, it's certainly a special day. Just so that our friends from the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum know, it came up a little while ago that you were coming to town as part of your conference. It was suggested that there might be an opportunity to get hold of you to see if you'd be interested in coming in and talking to us as a committee.
We say thank you for taking that initiative and taking the time out of your schedules to appear in front of us.
I've told you not to be nervous. I want this to be as informal as possible, even though we will go to rounds of questions. We're here to learn. It's great to have young people who are getting into agriculture, and who are into it, which is one of the most significant industries in this great country of Canada. It really is. From that, as committee people, we look at legislation and we look at where agriculture has taken us. We talk to a lot of witnesses, and we talk to a lot of people who come in from different organizations. Not often do we get the opportunity to specifically address young farmers who are in it as innovators and as leaders in your community and in your organizations, who specifically come and talk to us. We look forward to that very much.
As I mentioned, there is a bit of a formal time.
I'm going to ask Mr. Froese to start. He will have opening statements. I think he was told seven minutes, but it's seven or ten. Colleagues, I'm not going to cut off the time as I usually try to do. I will try to keep it more informal during our time.
We do have two hours today. If we run out of questions, we'll quit early, but I doubt that will happen.
With that, Mr. Froese, I'll turn it over to you for an opening statement. Welcome.