Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you back in the chair.
I want to ask my colleague a question and go through a bit of a history lesson here on why we are raising these concerns.
The small business tax changes devastated Canadian farmers. Then we had the grain backlog and lost trade relationships with India, China and many other countries. We had the CN strike this fall. Then agriculture was not mentioned in the throne speech. Also, this summer the Liberals missed a critical deadline in applying for negligible risk status for BSE. Now our Ontario ranchers are having an extremely difficult time. Canadian farmers see the indifference from the Liberal government and how it just does not seem to care about agriculture.
I would like to ask my colleague, from whom I am honoured to take the title of shadow minister of agriculture after he had done such an amazing job over the last year, why he thinks the leadership that this special committee will show to Canadian farmers is so important.