Agriculture committee  Yes. I can speak to the industry-led projects that have been announced to date out of AgriFlex. There are two projects with the Canola Council of Canada that would address some of the innovation and competitiveness of that sector. They have a value of $9.4 million. Also, three pr

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, before we talk about the Interlake situation specifically, I'd like to go back to something. There has also been significant take-up on the AgriInsurance side, on insurance payments to producers who have that insurance in the Prairies. We recognize that thi

Agriculture committee  Perhaps, Mr. Chair, I can start with the answer to that question. In partnership with Health Canada, we have done a significant amount of work already with our pest management centre and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which actually does approve the pesticides for use.

Agriculture committee  Yes. I'm speaking to pesticides and horticulture and those that are used on the crop side.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to go through the remarks very quickly. We did distribute them to members. I think they will set a context and give some examples to start the conversation that we're going to have today. Thank you. As Greg just said, the programs we deliver w

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, perhaps I could start with just a few points to again put this program into context. The advance payments program actually functions under a piece of legislation called the Agricultural Marketing Programs Act. It's a federal loan guarantee program and, as I mentioned i

Agriculture committee  I will let Ms. Aylard tell us about what in effect will happen under this legislation. The point I want to underline is that we consulted the industry sectors, trying to do the best we could for the livestock sector in these situations, and then used every flexibility we had unde

Agriculture committee  First of all, we have already heard these comments from the agriculture sector. I will ask Danny Foster to respond to your comments.

Agriculture committee  We also have some other suggestions. We are getting them together and weighing the impact and the costs to departments. Producers will continue to receive compensation while we work on the next strategic framework. We are looking at policies and at the same time, trying to provi

Agriculture committee  We have a responsibility to provide the minister and the government with the most reliable information on the various options that are being presented to us by the sectors.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Perhaps I can just start by very quickly highlighting what we call the BRM one-pagers.

Agriculture committee  These are documents that I understand we send to members and we also deposit in the Library of Parliament on a regular basis; every time, we deposit in up-to-date detail what total government contributions are as well as federal contributions by province. We will use this to mayb

Agriculture committee  Perhaps I can start and then have my colleagues jump in on some of these. On the agriculture budget for 2006, we'd like to come back to the committee with that number. We don't have the details today. On AgriInvest, it's true that we have had some growing pains in the implement

Agriculture committee  We totally understand and we're moving as quickly as we can to put those out. In fact, in terms of timeliness, with all of the devolution that has happened in Winnipeg, we have brought back a number of employees on casual status to make sure we address those issues of timing. For

Agriculture committee  One of the things that we did deal with this year was the implementation of a new system to do exactly that very thing and to automate more of the process. That was also implemented this spring. I entirely understand the concerns of the community. We're very aware of it and are d