Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
Mr. White, I appreciated your comments earlier to my colleague Mr. Barlow, when you were saying that farmers do everything they can to minimize their costs. We see that our costs are up year over year for farmers, and the carbon tax plays a big part in that, especially, I would think, on the Prairies, when we're hauling lots of grains, and canola in particular, from the fields back to the farm gate. Those transport trucks, of course, have to use fuel. The diesel fuel used in those trucks is not tax-exempt, contrary to some of the beliefs that we hear from other parties.
We've seen on the carbon tax data that has come out, even from the Liberals' own government data, that since that tax has been imposed, we haven't actually seen a reduction in emissions. We're talking now about putting on another layer with these carbon border adjustments.
What concerns me is that we haven't actually talked about the food security aspect of these new measures. We know that we have seen huge increases in food bank usage numbers over the past several years.
To either Mr. McCann or Mr. White, I'm just curious as to what you see as the core food areas that are most likely to be adversely impacted, and will these inflationary pressures create a ripple effect through to food markets elsewhere, leading potentially to more food insecurity?