I think I mentioned in my remarks that the governments at both the federal and provincial levels are ascribing a higher priority to food processing.
There are a couple or three issues that are really quite central to that. One is that it is higher value-added, so it's capturing more of the production value for Canadians and Canadian producers and processors. That's important.
The processing sector in Canada is a very substantial buyer of Canadian primary productions. Particularly in areas where a big anchor firm is directly tied to growing capacity—for instance, we would have heard about the Leamington challenges with tomatoes and Heinz—in those situations, the health of the processing sector is directly correlated with a healthy primary sector. I believe that Canadian processing is the purchaser of about 40% of what we grow, so that's important.
The third issue, I think, is employment. The food processing sector across the country is the largest manufacturing employer. In those cases, the provinces are very interested in making sure that the food processing sector remains healthy.
All governments are considering this as a priority, and going into the next framework anything that the committee can provide in the way of advice and insight, I think governments would welcome.