We haven't had any direct contact with agricultural producers. On occasion we will work with food producers in certain joint ventures, but we are concerned by the fact, as Dr. Sharma has mentioned, that fruit and vegetables are often prohibitively expensive, particularly in rural, remote, and northern areas of Canada.
We are concerned by the end of the food mail program and the substitute program that was put in its place, because often the subsidies are not passed on to consumers directly. They reside with the distributor. Given rates of aboriginal diabetes, that is a particular concern for us, because it's estimated that aboriginal diabetes rates are three to five times the rates of those found among the general population.
We need to provide affordable, inexpensive, healthy, nutritious food for all Canadians. That includes people who live on reserve, aboriginal Canadians who live off reserve, and also people on low incomes. I don't think it's any surprise that the consumption of soft drinks has gone up quite precipitously, when you consider that soft drinks are often much less expensive than milk. What message does that send to young people, in terms of what drinks they should be consuming?
While we haven't had those conversations directly, we would certainly be in favour of exploring measures to make healthy, nutritious food more affordable and less expensive, because it's well known that up to 50% of type 2 diabetes cases could be avoided with healthier eating and increased physical activity.