Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start with Mr. Siekaniec, from Stonewall, Manitoba. My mother was born in Balmoral. So we're almost neighbours in some fashion there.
I just wanted to flag this for the committee. In your presentation—I don't know if you went through it, because there is more here than you could say in your 10 minutes—I think your answer to our first question about the most effective conservation organizations was that they tended to possess seven qualities. You listed several items: that they are science-based, have grass-roots support, that they lever resources, that they target conservation of priority habitats, and have a landscape approach to conservation, and that they reach out and collaborate, and employ adaptive management to continuously improve their programs.
I think that's the best answer we've heard so far to that particular question, so I want to thank you for that.
I want to say congratulations to Ducks Unlimited for their 75 years. We all appreciate the work you have done for so many years, and all of you at the table today are leaders in this realm.
Having said that, I want to flag over to another part of the discussion about ALUS and politically sustainable private-public partnerships to deliver conservation incentives. That was dealt with in Mr. Scarth's presentation, I believe, but others have been talking about this as well.
In your presentation, Mr. Scarth—I'll start with you—you mentioned the best program in memory, the conservation chapter in the U.S. farm bill south of the border. We've heard from other farm organizations about the ecological farm plan here in Canada, in which some 74,000 farms, or about 50% of the farms, are involved.
Can you compare these programs for us? What is it about this U.S. farm bill south of the border that maybe has qualities that we haven't incorporated in our environmental farm plan?