Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon. My name is Christian Overbeek; I am a farmer from Saint-Hyacinthe and the owner and sole shareholder of a family business. My main crops are corn, soy and wheat, which I grow non-commercially to improve the quality of my soils, as well as a few cover crops and intercrops such as ryegrass, clover, fall rye, radish and others.

To give you a brief description of our sector in Quebec, we grow grain on more than 1 million hectares across Quebec. Those crops are maintained by 9,500 families, who produce more than 5 million tonnes. As you can see, this is extremely diversified farming. We grow a broad range of grain crops across Quebec.

As per our normal farming practice, we must first of all ensure that we can cultivate our fields through sowing, crop maintenance, harvesting and tillage operations. In the past few years, we have obviously added farm-based grain drying and conditioning as well as storage. All that requires energy consumption. Consequently, if we want to stay competitive in the grain sector, it is important for us to have access to cheap energy that is not overtaxed by different aspects of various government programs.

Product quality is extremely important for us grain growers because consumers in local, provincial, national and international markets still want top-quality grain. Knowledge acquired in recent years has shown that we must harvest at slightly higher humidity levels than what the market expects, condition our grain on the farm and then market it guaranteeing the high level of quality that has made the reputation of Canadian grain in Canadian and international markets.

Any additional tax will thus increase our production costs and make us less competitive with other farmers around the world.

I understand that Quebec is currently subject to a carbon pricing system that may be different from what's being done in other Canadian provinces. Ultimately, we want to be sure we are operating on a fair and equitable basis with all farmers around the world.

To sum up the situation, the carbon tax of $23 per tonne for a medium-sized Quebec farm currently has an average financial impact of more than $2,000 on every farm in Quebec and thus an extremely significant effect on our sector's competitiveness.

We very much want this tax to be fully refunded to us through various Canadian government measures or simply for the government not to tax propane, diesel or natural gas in the first place.

Those are the essential points I wanted to make today given the short period of time we are allotted.

I will be pleased to answer your questions.

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