Agriculture committee  Further to what John is saying, when I told you what I was having to pay for fertilizer, I didn't finish the thought: the grain growers and the canola growers are going to need $8 a bushel for their canola just to make the revenues they are currently making at $5 because of the higher input costs, so the beneficiary of the ethanol is not going to be the grain producer.

Agriculture committee  I am not aware of what the position of our provincial and national associations is on it, but just yesterday I went to purchase a load of 46-0-0, which is nitrogen, and the price change from last year to this year is 35%, from $545 to $715 a tonne. That is a direct effect of the support that the ethanol community is receiving and the compounding effect of the ingredients' going to produce ethanol.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Steckle raised an issue that I would like to speak to. It falls under this labelling issue, for standards in dairy products and the fact that Kraft opposed the dairy labelling legislation, and the House of Commons didn't have the guts to push it through. The dairy industry is very concerned that the standards for dairy products are going to fall under the same pressures as the dairy labelling issues did.

Agriculture committee  Correct.

Agriculture committee  I appreciate your concerns. In the dairy industry, two issues are very current. We should extend a thank you to the current government for their efforts to impose an Article 28, so that we can put tariff limits on the importations of milk protein concentrates. This was a TRQ that wasn't around when the WTO was first initiated, so we didn't have one.

Agriculture committee  When it comes to politics, the future is always very cloudy. My industry and my livelihood are based on the supply management system and the fact that I can project into a year what I need to produce to fill my obligation to the marketplace. I know that I will get paid, instead of getting a kick in the teeth halfway through the crop year.

Agriculture committee  I'm a dairy farmer from the North Okanagan. I'm also a director of the B.C. Milk Producers Association, and I'm here as a director of the B.C. Milk Producers Association today. The B.C. Milk Producers Association has been the voice for dairy farmers in British Columbia since it was founded in 1936 as a committee of the B.C.