Thank you.
This has been a fascinating study for us. I'm glad to have you gentlemen here. I know my colleagues over there think we New Democrats feel the market is evil. We actually think the market's great, but we simply believe there need to be certain rules to keep a market competitive.
For example, look at the grocery business. You know, it used to be all those little corner grocery stores, then they consolidated and got bigger and bigger. Now there are all kinds of choices, but in a lot of these grocery stores small operators don't get shelf space. That's the way it is. If you want to compete in the milk business and you're a small milk company, go into another line of business, because it's set up, it's anti-competitive. They're not going to allow it.
It's the same in cattle. You have two cattle players and if they see a small operation get up and running, they'll drop the price of cattle a few cents and they can put you out of business. They're not doing it to give the consumer a break; they're doing it because they don't want competition. That's their business model and that's what they do.
Our question is, when we look at vertical integration here, what do we need to do, if anything, to ensure we don't have anti-competitive practices?
Mr. Hennessy, you're giving us a very different picture of the potential for this market from some of the other players. You talk about making content available but only at prohibitively expensive prices, or not allowing access in a timely manner. Why is it that you think the potential of vertical integration can be offset by troubling issues of anti-competitive behaviour toward smaller third-party players?