Agriculture committee  I'll come at it from two perspectives, the farm perspective and the competitiveness perspective. Health Canada has released its guidance around gene editing for food, but it also requires the CFIA to release the guidance for biosafety and for feed. Typically, food is what we actually anticipated taking the longest.

Agriculture committee  Ninety-five per cent of Canadian farms are family-run businesses. Farms do get bigger, because you need scalability. It's very expensive to buy this. You can't have a bunch of 100-acre farms with a combine in each one. On the intensity in agriculture emissions, we've been at about 8% for the last 20 years, but we've increased the amount that we're producing with those same emissions by 50%.

Agriculture committee  Thanks for the question. We represent Canada's 43,000 canola farmers who rely on PMRA. PMRA has been under-resourced and understaffed for years. Part of our calls have been on that. The concern we have.... In direct response to your question, we look at their workload increasing and the special reviews that are triggered any time a Codex country makes a decision on a unit.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. There's just no question about it. The amount of organic matter that's allowed to be built up in soil because we're not tilling it, because we're not having to get rid of all of those weeds, because we have genetically modified crops that are herbicide-tolerant, because we have products like glyphosate, saves huge amounts of GHG emissions and also allows farmers to plant directly into the soil.

Agriculture committee  Yes, it's about incentivizing farmers to do the things on farm, and if we're going to roll out money, farmers need to actually be able to utilize and deploy that money. The programs need to be operationalizable on farm.

Agriculture committee  I don't have the exact numbers, Mr. Perron, but on-farm debt is at an all-time high. Farmers are over-leveraged, certainly, and I think farmers' liquidity is also a big concern. Farmers tend to be cash-poor. They have a lot of money tied up in acres and equipment, but when it comes to liquidity, on-farm debt is at an all-time high.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I think farmers are also looking for credit for the things they've done. If you look at other jurisdictions around the world, say the United States, our level of conservation, no-till acres, is far higher than in the United States. I think what we need to look at is incentivizing farmers to do more things on farm, absolutely.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely, even if you look back two generations, when it came to weed control, you plowed the land, you tilled the land, you plowed the land. Any time you had a drought, you had soil and dust flying everywhere. I think when it comes to the realities, we need to make smart, sensible federal agriculture policies that allow farmers to be innovative and competitive on farm, because the cost of doing the things we're speaking of here is incredibly expensive.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the invitation to appear. I'm filling in for our farmer chair, Mike Ammeter, who is down the road presiding over a board meeting as we speak. Global food insecurity is a complex, multi-faceted issue. It involves geopolitics, socio-economic factors and armed conflict.

Transport committee  I fully agree. It's integrated. We need trucks to get the grain from farm to elevator. We need the rail to get from elevator to port and then we need ships to be able to take it to the final destination. As far as what we should do goes, as your colleague Mr. Badawey said at the outset, there are dozens of great reports.

Transport committee  We are concerned that there will be additional instability in the labour industry. As has been noted, it's not the date of stoppage; you start curtailing operations a week or so leading up to it. A week of downed rail capacity can mean a month to recover. I'll see if Steve has anything more specific to answer, but I'm certainly concerned when we have that many happening.

Transport committee  I'll start and then ask Steve weigh in. CP moves roughly 50% of all grain from the Prairies to the port of Vancouver. October, November and December are big months for moving grain, so that is certainly a concerning signal. I'll ask Steve if he has any more details as to the causes, because there was no labour issue or inclement weather, to my knowledge.

Transport committee  I think the first would be the establishment of an industry-government labour council, as indicated in the report, with strong representation from agriculture. The second, before I ask my colleague Steve to weigh in, would be more timely data and transparency from the railways.

Transport committee  Thank you for the invitation to be here today. I'm joined virtually by my colleague Steve Pratte, senior manager, transportation and biofuel policy. CCGA is a national organization representing Canada's 43,000 canola farmers on issues and policies that impact on-farm profitability.

International Trade committee  I can't speak necessarily to the clean-tech side of it, Madam Chair. I can say, though, that when you are exporting something like a Canadian canola product, which is really good at sequestering carbon and does have recognition under the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification, we are in a way exporting a very carbon-neutral product.