Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses for being a little bit flexible with the timing. Certainly the technical issues are out of everyone's control, so it's great that you're able to do this.
Mr. Hamilton, I'll start with you. I had the pleasure of touring Oxford's head office in Nova Scotia last summer. It's a great operation. It's good to see the commitment of that business to the region.
You mentioned opening the border. We wrote a letter to the Minister of Agriculture, actually exactly a year ago today, asking for many of these things that you are requesting and to reassess the risks of importing hives from some of those regions in the United States. As a matter of fact, we've never had a response from the Minister of Agriculture to those requests to reopen the evaluation process. If the agriculture committee also doesn't get a response from the Minister of Agriculture on a request of that nature, I can understand how frustrated you must certainly be, given how important this is to your industry.
Just to continue on our letter and maybe some of the comments you made, what has changed between the time of that border closing, which you said you voted in favour of, in the late 1980s and now? Why do you feel a risk assessment is warranted now? Are the same concerns that were there when the border was closed no longer there? What has changed specifically that should no longer be a concern?