Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the panel for being here.
My riding is made up of a mostly rural agriculture area—30,000 square kilometres. My heritage is also in agriculture. I still farm and ranch, so I have a deep appreciation for the impact and importance of farming to our economy, but also for Canadians in the production of good food.
I know from people in my riding that stress and anxiety went up last summer when they heard from the current government and were labelled as tax cheats. The government was looking at ways to get more from them—taking money out of their pockets—making it more difficult for them to pass their farms on to their next generation.
In my area, the language that was used in accusing people of that caused anger and frustration, and it really showed a disconnect between our agriculture community and the current government.
Does that kind of language create problems for those who are struggling already? That would be one question.
The other one would be, did you observe any impacts on the farming community that you interact with on the policies that were brought out, or the messaging that was used, that would impact them even more, or did they just internalize the attacks that they received?