Agriculture committee  Did I fully answer your question? There might have been a third point that—

Agriculture committee  Of farm cash receipts across the country.

Agriculture committee  Actually, I'm not very close to the rail service review. The way we approach issues in the canola industry, we are focused mostly on the growers associations. I don't know that I would comment too much on that. I would encourage you, if you want to know more about that, to ask the Canadian Canola Growers Association, the producer group, to appear before the committee.

Agriculture committee  First, I think, is innovation. It's the public investment and working well together on research and innovation. We constantly have to innovate with the product. We have new specialty canola oils, high-oleic canola oils that have special characteristics for the food processing market, which are a real innovation and are driving the industry now.

Agriculture committee  We're interested in being sure there's a robust public investment and that we work together, as we are doing through the science cluster, to ensure we're making the best use of those dollars. The other element is rules-based trade and science-based regulation. In the canola industry, we have 85% to 90% reliance on exports, and to a fairly small number of large markets.

Agriculture committee  In terms of research, it's important for us to continue to innovate. We have a strategic plan in the industry not only to increase production, but to increase the value of the product, the energy value of the meal and the oil content. If you can improve the oil content of the seed, for every percentage you increase, you're creating more oil per acre of land.

Agriculture committee  Yes. There's a grain industry round table, and it has been very helpful. The model there is that the industry works closely with government officials and they develop policies together so there is an understanding of what the issues and challenges are. There's understanding from the industry perspective of what the limits of government are.

Agriculture committee  That's a good question. First of all, I think I'd point out that we are doing a lot more value added in Canada with the expansion of our crushing facilities—really, a doubling of our crushing facilities—over the last many years. We're now doing more value-added crushing of the seed in Canada and producing oil and meal.

Agriculture committee  I think by and large in terms of the infrastructure, and this is an important comment on the value chain, by working and pulling together around the Canola Council table and setting goals for the future, the industry has been able to work towards those goals in a collective manner.

Agriculture committee  Those are a couple of very good questions. The issue around low-level presence is the possibility of the contamination of shipments that are qualified, that are approved, by low-level presence genetic traits that are not qualified. If I could define “low-level presence” for this discussion, it is the unintended presence of products, GM traits, that have been approved in the market that's exporting, or in another market, but have not been approved in the market that you're importing into.

Agriculture committee  Good morning. As the chairman indicated, I'm Jim Everson. I'm vice-president of corporate affairs for the Canola Council of Canada. Thank you for the opportunity to update the committee on the priorities for the canola industry value chain. I'd like to begin by providing a brief overview of our industry, and then outline some of the key factors that affect the competitiveness of the canola value chain.

Agriculture committee  We think it's very significant. It's a step forward that the European Community has basically said they have to provide some tolerance level for a low-level presence in feed for industrial use. The fact that the European Community and the member states came together and managed to come up with a qualified majority in support of an issue around genetically modified products was quite significant in its own right.

Agriculture committee  I think that's a really important point. Rick, in his opening comments, talked about larger commodities worldwide and the amount of money that's going into research on those commodities. From a canola perspective, it's really important that we keep up with innovation in Canada.

Agriculture committee  I think public research and private research are both critically important to the future of the canola industry. We're in a good place in terms of the future in feeding the world. It's also really critical that we express--and everybody around the table, in terms of parliamentarians--confidence in Canada's regulatory process.

Agriculture committee  Rick, I think in your presentation you said something like 90% or 93% of overall acreage is genetically modified. This year the estimates could be 18 million to 19 million acres of canola.