Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses who are here before us.
I'm the member representing Hamilton Centre, but I certainly know the west coast perspective. Both Gord Johns and Rachel Blaney have been up in the House talking about the great work coming out of the west coast. Certainly, we have distillers in Ontario.
In fact, I will even state at the outset that at some of our darkest points during COVID, our government, in fact all governments and I believe Canadian society, looked to those good-news stories, those stories of goodwill and the all hands on deck, team Canada approach. While I'm not government, I want to begin my comments by thanking you for not being cynical and for doing everything in your ability, within your association and within your sector, to provide one of the most critical PPEs, hand sanitizers. To change up that production on the fly, to just do the right thing because it was the right thing to do, is really commendable. As a member of Parliament, I just want to take this moment to thank you.
You mentioned, Mr. Dyck, that it was about more than hurt feelings. I do want to get into some deeper understanding about whether your association has done any preliminary estimates on what it would take to be made whole. Perhaps Mr. Guitor from Ontario could also comment.
We have heard what individual distilleries have put out, but have you, from a national perspective, looked at the amount of, I will say, goodwill—but these are real dollars—that you have invested into this recovery? Could you estimate the amount that would make these distillers whole for the contribution they had early on and without any promise of profit?