Agriculture committee  I think they're two sides of the same coin to reach the same ends.

Agriculture committee  No. I'd have to find the exact page, but certainly not. The idea here is around keeping farms in the hands of farmers, so there'd be no absentee ownership or corporate ownership by people who have nothing to do with farming, as in foreign ownership, investor ownership. The idea t

Agriculture committee  You hit the nail on the head. What's interesting is the link between the two questions you had, because foreign ownership, absentee ownership, all of that—

Agriculture committee  It drives up the prices of all the farms, right, so it makes it possible to ask for $2.2 million for a farm. These things are important. Globally there's a land grab on farmland because it can be used for all kinds of things now, and it's pricing out food and food production. In

Agriculture committee  May I add something? May I add one little bit? There is also the issue of the liability of the producers. You spoke about organic products. I'm not talking specifically about organics, even though that is one aspect of sustainable agriculture. On the ground, there needs to be

Agriculture committee  Thank you for your question. This is a concern for us as well. It's really a matter of comparing figures. We see that the food we buy in dollar stores, for example, is part of a system of agriculture and industrial processing that benefits significantly from all kinds of subsidi

Agriculture committee  Yes, precisely. And we're the ones paying the cost in terms of health, environment and in social respects. But in the local, sustainable sector, there are almost no subsidies. The external impact is enormous environmentally and socially. It's important to look into these figures

Agriculture committee  There are two sides to that. One is making it easier for them to buy it by aggregating that local sustainable food. The other side is making a policy environment where those large retail stores have to buy local and sustainable food. One example to look at is biofuels. We've le

Agriculture committee  I couldn't agree more. In fact, those are some of the concrete elements of a local food strategy that we would propose. In Canada we need to rebuild the middle of our agriculture system. We need to rebuild regional processing and local processing so that people have access to t

Agriculture committee  It could come from several sectors, since it's an investment in our future. So the funding could come from the government or the private sector. We can evaluate what the social benefits and the benefits related to our health system would be. How much could we save by having more

Agriculture committee  Yes, and we know what the consumers want. Interest in what we eat has grown significantly. We want to eat healthy, fresh food from producers we know close to home. It's good for everyone. That's why I'm encouraging you to consider a concrete aspect of this policy that supports lo

Agriculture committee  Basically, it's a matter of poverty. The other recommendations of the People's Food Policy reflect other priorities. I noted two—sustainable food and eating locally—but there are five in total. One of them is a federal poverty prevention program. If we don't systematically addre

Agriculture committee  Actually, in 15 years, we have lost 62% of our young farmers. It's a very serious situation. If we want Canadian food and agriculture, we need Canadian farmers. And for that, we need to take into account what farmers make. Now, as you know, their income is less than zero, if we c

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. It's a real honour to be among you, our elected representatives. I acknowledge that you're working hard to make Canada a better place and to build a better future for food in Canada. Food Secure Canada shar