Agriculture committee  We went through that question with the deputy minister, Mr. Knubley, about a year and a half ago when the proposal came forward to do the exemption list. That would have been a horrific nightmare to try to deal with. We will agree to disagree on the 98% number. The 98% number is not achievable for the vast majority of products if there's any processing done whatsoever.

Agriculture committee  That, primarily, is where the area of automation modernization is required. The Netherlands are very competitive at much higher wage rates and benefit rates than what we have in this country, and they have high energy costs and all the rest of it. Just as an example, energy is a major component.

Agriculture committee  Well, fundamentally, you look back to our climate and our agricultural land base in terms of what we are best suited to. We're not the greatest vegetable climate in the world. We have half of southern Alberta covered in greenhouses, and we still can't supply everything required.

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure that legislating it is the answer, obviously, because we are in a market economy and we have a free market out there, and they are entitled to do their thing. However, the Government of Canada and the appropriate ministers can certainly influence those types of decisions to bring some rationale and some thought to the issue.

Agriculture committee  The difficulty occurs when someone in any given organization who has influence within that organization says they need a better standard than they have. Remember, this is not altruistic. It has nothing to do with altruism at all. They're doing this because food is the next tobacco; we're just about to start getting sued over these things, and they're doing their absolute utmost to ensure that they don't get themselves caught in this situation, so they're getting advice from somebody within their organization, or outside it, that this standard is the good one and the one they have to go with.

Agriculture committee  If I thought for a minute that I could get Galen and the head of Sobeys and the head of Safeway and the head of Save-On-Foods, Jimmy Pattison's group, together in a room, and that they would actually come because I invited them, I would do so. Unfortunately, they won't come because I make that phone call, and I think that's really what we're talking about: there is a level where that phone call could take place.

Agriculture committee  I spent 45 years in retail here and in the United States.

Agriculture committee  —and the time value of the money.

Agriculture committee  As I said, it's whatever.... It's the loan pool we're talking about here.

Agriculture committee  Even the small businesses, because—

Agriculture committee  Do you mean in terms of companies?

Agriculture committee  All sizes would benefit from it.

Agriculture committee  If you want to go from being small to medium-sized, you need to be able to go into that kind of a jump. Again, we have Alberta. We have a lot of things in place out there. We have this business incubator. We have the development centre. We built the business incubator so that people could move into development to get to production, the theory being you could build orders and then go out and build your plant.

Agriculture committee  At the end of the day, it's whatever the defaults were—

Agriculture committee  In that loan pool, I would suggest you're probably looking at somewhere between $800 million and $900 million to take us significantly down that road, and you could continue to reinvest it. The other downside with API is that API money coming back in will not be reinvested in that program; it's going back into general revenues.