I may give you an opportunity to talk.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Actually, I want to start with you, Ms. Fowlie, and speak to some of the things your organization has. We have this “Fresh Thinking” booklet that you've provided. In it, you speak about bee health and neonicotinoid pesticides, the update, and so on.
You talked about the issue of having a province deciding that they have a certain solution that perhaps is not based on the reality of the business. Of course, with that, you talked about the document they were looking at being somewhat one-sided. You also have the facts about bee deaths, but you talk about the increase: New Brunswick went from 2,700 to roughly 4,300 colonies in the province, Quebec from about 36,000 to 50,000—this is over four years—and Alberta from 251,000 to 280,000. This is important for people to recognize, so that when you start hearing about bee deaths and so on, you realize what is actually happening throughout the country. All of these are going up, and of course everyone is doing the utmost they can.
I think it's important because, such as we are studying here, that is the issue we have for interprovincial trade. Once you stop that, or you start people thinking that those who perhaps don't quite understand what is happening on the farm are making decisions, it's going to have an affect from province to province. Then of course, as you had indicated, you have discrepancies with how you are going to manage your farm if that is the case.
That's really the one point I wanted to make. I would like to have you comment on it, but I do have to speak to the comments that I've heard from the Meat Council.
Certainly I do understand the significance.... Again, international trade is so important as far as our meat industry is concerned. But I have spent a lot of time...and I realize that there are a lot of fantastic provincial abattoirs and meat plants that are there, that do the work they need for what they wish to do, which is to sell within their provinces.
I'm sure you're looking at one issue that was a concern, and you were quite emphatic about it, but I don't want people to think that we don't have some amazing provincial standards as well. Some of the differences are simply someone saying, “Am I going to have a footbath when I go from here to there?”, and to keep those types of things different. There are a lot of different aspects associated with it.
Perhaps, Mr. Reda, I'll give you a chance to speak to some of that, and then, Ms. Fowlie, if we do have some time, you could react to the other.