Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses who are here.
I am going to continue on some of the line of questioning that's happening today. I want to start on the innovation piece. Innovation always gets my attention.
I'm going to go back to the campaign. I think we had 11 candidate debates. The first one was hosted by Food Secure Canada at Innovation Guelph. It's a centre that I am a co-founder of. It was a hot afternoon. We had six candidates, and Food Secure Canada wanted to make sure candidates were talking about food. Here we are—different table, not quite as hot inside, probably the same outside.
The sixth point you made, Madam Bronson, was about innovation.
The Children's Foundation in Guelph runs a program called food and friends. They collect Christmas trees, about 4,000 trees a year. They raised about $50,000 last year. They serve 16,000 students, 1.9 million meals a year. It's social innovation. This was started because the city said they weren't going to collect Christmas trees anymore, so the Children's Foundation stepped in and said, let's get some volunteers to pick up the trees. Pay five or 10 dollars apiece, and we'll collect some money and help the kids.
This is an example of social innovation that wasn't driven by government or big programs. There are probably other grassroots programs. Co-operation agri-food New Brunswick is another example.
Does your organization track examples of grassroots efforts to help children get good meals in their schools? Is that something we can include in our food study? If the government could help from the sidelines, because the programs are being driven by the grassroots, is there a role that social innovation funding or shared ideas could play?
It's a long question.