Agriculture Committee on April 9th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much for that.

It sort of leads into my second question. We've talked a lot today about wheat and the research in wheat. But most of that is in western Canada. For example, I'm from Ontario, and in Ontario we grew about 950,000 acres of wheat last year.

So it might not be the large acres, but the significance of it in terms of our farmers and in terms of soil, the rotation, feed supply, and the supply chain is likely just as significant to the farmers in central and eastern Canada as it is to the west. That's why I think the research is so important across Canada.

We haven't really had a lot of discussion about the research for those products. I can talk about soybeans and the soybean 20/20. There's a lot of research that has gone in to avail itself to different products in terms of oil that comes from soybeans, but maybe you could touch on the research of wheat, particularly around Ontario, which is one of the larger growing areas.

[Gilles Saindon]

It's a very good point, because with the launch of the new clusters led by the Western Grains Research Foundation, we managed this time to have the entire country under one umbrella. Before we had the group in Ontario, and in Quebec

the Fédération des producteurs de cultures commerciales du Québec.

They were kind of separate and they had kind of a mini wheat focus on that. With the Growing Forward 2, with the clusters in wheat, we managed to have all of this under one umbrella.

The point is that they are now able to mobilize all that capacity and infrastructure that we have in western Canada with the University of Saskatchewan and put that together with the University of Guelph and people in the province of Quebec as well, at CÉROM. They basically have something that is more comprehensive. Leveraging all that research in western Canada, and with the research in eastern Canada...because it's all wheat.

At the end, we have to change some specificity—one is winter, the other one is spring—so that you have it...but I think you could exchange that more freely. I think the leveraging of that is probably the biggest accomplishment, and that's very useful and very precious for the people in Ontario.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much.

I want to say thank you to our witnesses. We've finished it off in round three. We're getting close to 4:55 p.m. I think we've had a good discussion.

I thank the witnesses for coming forward.

Members, thank you very much. See you on Monday.

The meeting is adjourned.