Thank you very much.
I'm going to turn now to Ms. Robinson or perhaps Mr. Ross. I have heard from many growers in the produce industry that, when they are dealing with big grocery chains, they are subjected to a number of either fees or different things. I have heard they are subjected to unloading fees. For the privilege of being able to deliver their goods to the centralized distribution warehouse for a grocer, they are charged a fee to unload their trucks there.
I have also heard that if a truck arrives late, let's say 10 minutes late for its appointment time, it is then charged a fine for being late. However, if the grocer doesn't get around to unloading the truck and makes the truck sit in the yard for 12 hours, they will still make them pay a fee for that. We have also heard of farmers being charged a fine if their truck is speeding one kilometre over the speed limit in the distribution centre's yard at some point.
We have heard of rejection fees, so if a load is rejected by the person who processes the load at the distribution centre, then the farmer who.... Let's be clear: No farmer is going to want to send a perishable product to go on a grocery store shelf that is not of great quality on a truck to a distribution centre to then have it rejected and go back to their farm, and have to repay the transportation cost to get it back there. They are also being charged rejection fees if their load is rejected. This is on top of rebates or charge-backs to the farmers who pay the privilege of having a vendor number and keeping that vendor number with the grocery store chain.
Have you heard of these things happening from our growers in Canada?
Maybe this is all going to go into what we have talked about, and what I have talked about, since the fall of 2020: We need a grocery code of conduct in this country to actually protect our growers and to keep our family farms in business. I'm scared of what the future is going to look like 15 years from now if we don't have family farms producing great quality produce in this country.
Can you comment on any of that?