Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Lemaire, Ms. Fowlie, and Mr. Gilvesy, thank you for coming out and presenting us with a very thoughtful and thorough talk.
I've been hearing much of what you've said for the past year or so, during the campaign and beforehand, and for the past six months. What struck me was that I got two things when I was speaking to the fruit and vegetable growers. As you may know, I'm from Steveston—Richmond East. It's basically Vancouver and then Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford, and Chilliwack.
There were two things, first, the precarious nature of the business, the boom and bust cycles. They were kind of envious of the marketing board system because, in our part of the world, the blueberry, the strawberry, the potato, and tomato farmers are near the dairy farmers, the chickens, and the turkeys. They compare their situation with the supply management system.
The second part was the intergenerational aspect, that they're all family farmers. Which is a wonderful thing, but it also concerned them because if the business went down, they went down because it wasn't a company. They could be structured in a corporate way or in a business way, but it was their family.
If you had to provide me and other members of the committee with an action plan, what we could do to help you to deal with some of the concerns or obstacles that the three previous witnesses had, what would be in it?