Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here. This is very informative. I didn't know that about maple syrup. It's interesting.
We too have a large collection of greenhouses in Leamington—I'm sure you're aware of that—that I understand there's a new market for those products.
I guess I'm a little bit of a hippie farmer. I'm actually not a farmer by trade, but I have a small farm and I do enjoy it. I wish I could just live on a farm, as well.
I have an affinity and I have a little bit of sympathy for what you're saying, Mr. Bourbeau, with regard to the dairy industry. I have to tell you, too, that my oldest son would go into dairy in a heartbeat, if he could. One thing stops him, and that, of course, is the quota system.
In light of that, I know our former agriculture minister—he's a member of this committee but couldn't be with us this morning—would always point out that when we came into power in 2006, there was a crisis in agriculture. Agriculture was defined as waiting for the cheque in the mailbox. Farmers really did need that support. We made a conscious effort as a government to move that direction away from support and toward the marketplace. We've been, I think, fairly successful, but not in dairy, it appears. At least that's what you're telling me, and that's what I'm hearing as well.
First, how can we move the dairy industry so that it reflects more of what's happening in the rest of agriculture? For instance, in Mr. Hoback's part of the world with the grains, and in my part of the world with the grains and also some of the vegetables, we've seen...I'm not saying no challenges, but there's a renewed optimism and there's a vision that there's so much potential and we're seeing so much innovation. How can we see that same result in the dairy industry?
Second, how can we give people like my son the opportunity to get into the dairy industry and somehow bypass that enormous cost of supply management?