Mr. Speaker, one of the many Canadian industries has often overlooked is our fertilizer industry.
This industry employs nearly 12,000 people in the manufacture, wholesale and retail levels. This does not include the thousands of jobs in transportation and related sectors supported by our fertilizer industry or the function that fertilizers serve in Prince Edward Island agriculture and agriculture throughout Canada.
From our 23 million tonnes of production, $2.5 billion worth is shipped within Canada and $3 billion is exported.
Today, while we have representatives of the fertilizer industry here in the gallery, I compliment them on creating an internationally competitive Canadian industry.