Last December my provincial counterparts and representatives of the industry were asking me to convince my colleagues, I would say, to have an exemption for the price on pollution on the energy needed to dry grains. At that time, I had some data from the department, but I wanted to get more from the industry and from my provincial colleagues to see if I had a business case to make. I told them that if I had a business case demonstrating that the price on pollution on grain drying had a significant impact on farmers, I would make the case to my colleagues and see what we could do.
I received the information. If you look only at the price on pollution on grain drying, it's less than 1% of the operations of the average farm. The numbers I received go much wider than that. They presented me with more data around the impact of the price on pollution of direct and even indirect costs to farmers applied to their profits. Obviously, when we look at the data this way, it becomes significant.