Agriculture committee  I am not sure I understood the end of the question, but I will try to answer it nevertheless. As regards the issue of how to avoid making the same mistake twice, I would say this. Indeed, that is a production that has expanded in a market where the value of the dollar was very low, which means that it was easy to have access to markets.

Agriculture committee  I may not talk about regulations. However, as regards buyer concentration, there are three or four large buyers of food products in Canada. It is a bit of a vicious circle: buyers want to concentrate their purchases, and if the same person buys all the ham for a company, it is much more appealing for that company than to have a buyer in each province or region.

Agriculture committee  Yes, that is the case for a number of operations that produce certain products, including hog farms. I would go further than that. As regards standards, whether we are talking about environmental or business standards, I would lean towards reciprocity at the border. I think that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada can do a lot in this respect.

Agriculture committee  As Réjean mentioned earlier, when it comes to agriculture, the investments that have to be made are significant. They are often made for a single use. If we invest on a building that lasts 15 years, we need 12 to 15 years to break even. However, the policy may change after five years, as we saw recently with certain products.

Agriculture committee  It was not an outside contract. It was an initiative of the centre.

Agriculture committee  I am an agronomist. I have two roles: I am a management advisor for dairy, hog and other types of farms, two days a week, and I have been an agro-economist for the Centre de développement du porc du Québec, the CDPQ, for five or six months.

Agriculture committee  There were two control groups. The first came from the study by the Fédération des producteurs de porc du Québec, [Inaudible—Editor]. The data is obviously from 2008. The 2009 data will be available within a few weeks. The group on which we made the projections was a control group from the Fédération des producteurs de porc.

Agriculture committee  I do not have any figures because I have not examined this; I was not asked to. However, because a significant number of businesses will not make it through the crisis, it is important to focus on those that can be saved, even if we must decrease the amount of the repayments for two or three years.

Agriculture committee  Lastly, through programs like Growing Forward and PADEA, we must promote and provide even more multidiscipline consulting to businesses. These solutions are rarely limited to management consulting, finance consulting or technical management consulting. The combination and harmonization of these services within the same business can make solving problems easier.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I thank you for having me here. My speech will be divided into four points. First, I will talk about the precarious financial situation hog businesses are in. Second, I will explain why few businesses in Quebec participated in the two programs, the transition program and the federal government's HILLRP.