The agri-food industry is one of the premier industries in this province—some $45 billion, $50 billion to the provincial economy, and 800,000, 900,000 people work in it. This is one of the most important times of the year because regardless of what you grow, regardless of where it’s processed, this is the time of the year when the seeds go into the ground. Of the 200 crops that we grow in Ontario, the vast majority go in now; there are different times across the province.

On behalf of the entire Legislature, I just want to give a shout-out to the farmers who are making those decisions right now. This is an incredibly stressful time of the year because sometimes planting conditions aren’t right; in many parts of the province, they’re not right right now, and that farmer, whether he has 10 acres or 1,000, has to make that decision when he puts that soil in his hand to see if it’s dry enough. He or she has got thousands of dollars on the line. On behalf of all of us, farmers take the risks so that we can eat. That’s something that we can never, ever forget. And farmers who make those decisions need to have control of their own land—the land that they have built and conditioned so that they can grow the food for us. They should control their land.