Agriculture committee  I would say we're well aware of that, and we do stay in touch with groups. For example, the consulting engineers have raised some of these concerns with us as well, such as what happens if you're a small municipality—let's say my home town of Tisdale—and you put out a tender for a water plant and you get 12 European firms that bid on it, which may or may not have the capacity to understand what the weather and climatic conditions are for winters in western Canada as compared to winters in Europe?

Agriculture committee  I would say that one of the issues out there with a lot of farmers is.... People are asking a lot of these questions, too, Mr. Atamanenko. They're asking what the contracts will look like and what they will supply. Farmers are wanting to contract their new grain. People are contracting canola, the new crop canola, into fall pricing options already.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for inviting us to be here today. My name is Richard Phillips. I am the executive director of the Grain Growers of Canada. We represent tens of thousands of successful wheat, barley, canola, corn, pulse, rye, and triticale growers in Canada. With me today is Trevor Petersen, vice-chairperson of the Alberta Barley Commission, a member organization of the Grain Growers of Canada, and I'll be sharing my time with him.

Agriculture committee  For my part, I would like to raise three key areas important to helping increase competitiveness within our agriculture industry. First, an increase in overall research funding, public and private, is needed. Those of you who have been around this committee understand that farmers are divided on many issues, but this is the one that unites all of us.

International Trade committee  First I'll respond to the value-added piece. Feed grains are what go into pork, poultry, dairy cows, and beef, so when we say “value added” it is the processing as well, like the boxed meat cuts. But for us, having that local market there, whether it's Quebec farmers feeding beef or Ontario farmers feeding pork, and having the ability to move feed grains directly to our neighbour....

International Trade committee  The international standard out there is called Codex, which is an arm of the United Nations, and it's what we would like to see referenced. We'd like to see something like that out there so there's one standard, whether it's Canada doing the research on the food health and safety or the U.S. or the European Union.

International Trade committee  Thank you. We've timed our presentation and we'll be well under ten minutes, hopefully. The Grain Growers of Canada is an association of 13 canola, corn, wheat, barley, oats, peas, lentil, rye, and triticale commodity associations, as well as regional organizations like the B.C.

Bill C-18 committee  You're interested in what Gordon said, and thank you for that question, Mr. Valeriote.

Bill C-18 committee  I don't know if we specifically looked at that, but we certainly had comments from farmers and farm organizations that indicated that farmers would probably be out pitching what they wanted as something unique. In Saskatchewan, for example, or in another part of the prairies producers in the area or individual producers would say they will grow wheat to the exact specification and market it to a certain niche crop.

Bill C-18 committee  I'll start and then Steve can comment on the malt barley. We actually met with five people, the directors from the Western Grains Research Foundation. They gave us a pretty good overview of the work they're doing in terms of developing new varieties and what they're doing with the money, both the money from the check-off and then they also receive some money from the railways overpayment on the over-the-revenue cap.

Bill C-18 committee  Actually, Stephen is sitting right beside me. I haven't grown malt barley for two years now, but Stephen grows malt barley every year. Maybe he could respond. Stephen.

Bill C-18 committee  Thank you. I would say, when we look at all the other crops out in the open market, that they have check-offs operating very successfully. There's an oat check-off. I will make the estimate that over 90% of the money stays in these check-offs, and that less than 10% of the money for each of these commodities would ever be withdrawn by farmers.

Bill C-18 committee  Right now farmers can request their check-off back if they're not happy with what's going on with the work. It's up to the Western Grains Research Foundation to make a case, and for farm groups to stand up and point out the value of this research and the objectives. If $1 million goes in, it's $5 million of value coming back out to farmers, because, at the end of the day, I think a lot of farmers will look ahead.

Bill C-18 committee  I would say that the importance of research is one of the most consistent messages that we heard on the committee from I think every single producer group we met with, and the value-added process following research. I think it's critical that the funding continue for the Western Grains Research Foundation, CIGI, and for the Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre.

Agriculture committee  We were in the EU in January talking about this with EU parliamentarians. One fellow put it very well. He said, “We know what we have to do; we just don't know how to get re-elected after we do it, because there is consumer sensitivity in the EU.” It's fear of the unknown about whether GM products are safe or not.