I'm going to touch on a couple of things that will complement the red meat issue that Ernie has already expanded on here this morning.
The first of those is the need for expanded funding in the research area for agriculture in Prince Edward Island and the Maritimes. We are trying to diversify and expand our crops further from potatoes and more into grains and oilseeds. There has been a reduction in research in agriculture in those areas, especially in Prince Edward Island. It will be very important to return to previous levels or to expand on existing levels of research so that we can solve some of the issues that our crop sector is facing.
Grains in particular were in the news recently, with milling wheat on Prince Edward Island. We have an expanding milling wheat sector, but we need to have crops that are able to be grown in our specific climate, and we need to ensure that the processes and the research are in place so that we can continue to expand our milling wheat sector. It has tremendous potential. So research is one area, of course, where we need expanded funding, and we have a recommendation in our document.
The second area is energy. Electricity rates in Prince Edward Island are the highest in Canada, if not in North America. Our farmers are at a huge disadvantage because of those energy input costs. I don't need to tell anyone how much it costs to fill up your car with fuel. Those energy costs, of course, are all being handled by our farmers and put our farmers at a huge disadvantage. We need money so that farmers can access and implement on-farm energy projects to reduce their carbon footprint and to perhaps try to find ways to increase revenue on their farms by producing alternative energies. So research in that area and funding so that farmers can implement those projects on their farms are key.
We just touched on three very small things, very important things, however, and there would be many more if we had more time.
Thank you.