International Trade committee  Actually, in the size of facility we have, we have to buy European machinery. There's a history of small cheese-making in Europe, and there isn't in North America. North American machinery is not the type that we can use. So it's expensive.

International Trade committee  I haven't explored that at this time, no.

International Trade committee  At a discount?

International Trade committee  They do, yes.

International Trade committee  It's a certain demographic as well. Let's be realistic. It's a certain demographic. As I have said before, we're not filling the shelves in every supermarket with artisan cheese. There's still industrially produced cheese that is serving a great part of our market and selling a lot of Canadian milk, but there is a growing interest in using local products.

International Trade committee  Actually, that's really changing. We have the small production facility on the farm and we have never gone down the road trying to sell our product in a grocery store. They have come to us. Whole Foods Market sells our cheese. Choices Markets, all the higher end stores in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland have come to us specifically and asked for our product.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Yes. I guess it just depends on the customer, what the consumer wants, if it's enough. What we have to our advantage in British Columbia at least is we don't have plant quota, and we're not dictated what kind of cheese we can make. We have more flexibility. We can respond to the market.

International Trade committee  Thank you.

International Trade committee  Her contribution.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. Actually I was inducted into a French cheese-making guild. I have compatriots, confrères, everywhere. One in Toronto wants to have our cheese. We're still provincially licensed though, because we're small and we haven't produced enough to actually provide that market, but we would love to do that.

International Trade committee  I couldn't say that, but the one thing I can say is that if there are increased imports into our market of European cheeses—that's the foodstuff that we're talking about in my case—it can only increase awareness of cheese. Increased awareness increases consumer interest, it increases purchases, and therefore increased interest in our product creates increased production.

International Trade committee  Thank you.

International Trade committee  No. We're in full compliance with supply management in the sense that our farm is a licensed producer of milk. We created a second business on the farm, a limited company that processes milk. We have a very good arrangement. When we wanted to do this, the first thing we did, after checking with our municipality to see if it was legal to have processing on farm, which it was, was to go to our milk marketing board and discuss how we could make it work.

International Trade committee  As I underlined before, I believe that Canadians want to buy local. As you mentioned, there is a lot of concern among artisan cheese-makers that they'll have too much competition from imported European cheeses. Rather than focusing our attention on being able to export into the European market, I think it's more valuable for small Canadian artisan cheese-makers to have support from the infrastructure of local government and the Canadian system to help them continue on.