Last year, recommendations were submitted to the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food by the mitigation working group—created by the government in October 2018—on programs to address the financial impact of the three trade agreements on the dairy processing sector. We actively participated in this work. We made recommendations based on the government's commitment to provide full and fair compensation to the sector, meaning to both dairy producers and dairy processors.
We're hopeful that the coming budget will instill much needed confidence in the future of dairy processing through an announcement regarding a dairy processing investment program.
Rightly done, these two measures—the allocation of import quotas to processors and a dairy sector investment program—taken together could fairly and fully compensate Canada's dairy processing industry for the negative impact of the trade agreements. Only through these types of mitigation measures will the dairy processing industry be able to safeguard existing jobs and significant investments in Canada, while continuing to develop our future.
Thank you for your time and consideration. We're ready to answer your questions.