Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, Minister. I'm very pleased to welcome you to the committee. Thank you for being with us today.
It will come as no great surprise that I'm going to start by discussing compensation.
I was very pleased to see that your party supports the clear motion that was adopted earlier in the House. There's no ambiguity there. In fact, the only thing that's ambiguous are the dates on which the payments will be made.
You just told my colleague from Beauce that compensation will be paid to dairy producers at the end of the fiscal year, on March 31. I understood what you said, but that poses a problem. Are you aware that, in 2019, after they were given the choice to receive the first instalment in 2019 or 2020, many businesses chose to take it in 2019 to avoid getting two instalments in 2020? For the moment, however, it appears they'll receive two instalments in 2021, if I understand you correctly. That's a problem for small businesses. On the other hand, there wouldn't be any major consequences for the federal government if it paid out those amounts before Christmas, particularly since they've already been calculated and budgeted for. There's no surprise there. I don't understand why they couldn't be paid out before Christmas
Is there a chance that might be announced on Monday, for example? Can we hope for that?