Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. From a fertilizer security standpoint, I think eastern Canadian farmers and fertilizer importers play in a global value chain. The difficulty we experienced collectively with the fertilizer sanctions is.... Russia was a very significant, major player until last spring, in terms of Canadian fertilizer imports.

Agriculture committee  There are two parts to that. We're certainly very supportive of growers in eastern Canada receiving some degree of compensation. I think it's been discussed with the farm associations. Peggy noted that today, previously. To the second part of your question, the difficulty is that when supply opportunities at a global level specifically for nitrogen fertilizer become significantly restricted, the ability for Canadian importers to secure the quantity of nitrogen required to satisfy the needs of eastern Canadian growers becomes quite stressed.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I think Bill noted a bunch of really good examples there, but from our standpoint we export way too many commodity crops that we could be further processing domestically. Specifically within the province of Ontario, that's something we would look for: a business environment that fosters agribusiness investment domestically, where they see a predictable business environment and see a positive return on investment moving forward.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Russel Hurst. I serve as the executive director of the Ontario Agri Business Association, which is based in Guelph. We represent companies that range from single owner-operators to large multinationals that operate country and terminal grain elevators, livestock feed mills and crop input facilities operating out of approximately 500 locations throughout the province.