Agriculture committee  To my mind, the most important element in a successful innovation chain is coordinating and aligning the efforts of the various partners. That ensures that everyone is performing their role effectively and that we can implement all the pieces we are responsible for and pass them

Agriculture committee  We operate in a sphere of shared responsibility, involving stakeholders in universities, provincial governments and the private sector. So we need well-structured tools to ensure all those parties can work together smoothly. That's what science and agri-science clusters do for us

Agriculture committee  It's important to consider the entire chain, all the links working together. Of course, more scientists can be hired, but their expertise can also be harnessed through science clusters, allowing us to work with those in universities or the private sector. That's one way to make s

Agriculture committee  Dr. Mithani talked about innovation in agriculture. The program accounts for $700 million, which gives us nearly $468 million to work with industry on industry projects. That provides us with a solid base.

Agriculture committee  Demand for funding always exceeds the money we have available, but we are managing to cover the entire sector quite well. A rigorous process is used to select projects to ensure all possible thrusts are addressed.

Agriculture committee  Again, we'd like any program that makes cooperative working relationships possible. What's important is working collaboratively and bringing forward a variety of perspectives. And that isn't limited to branches of science; it also fosters a good understanding of markets. The clus

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure I could say exactly whether it helps or hinders innovation. The regulations are complex; and intellectual property issues can sometimes make it difficult to work together as far as the various regulations are concerned. Over the years, we've found ways to work toget

Agriculture committee  What I'd like to say on this is that this is the research that we will do as a department; that's all the research under stream A. Particularly it's around the thrust or area of crops, livestock, and food, and also in the area of sustainable production systems in terms of environ

Agriculture committee  No, we don't have that graph.

Agriculture committee  No, we don't have that.

Agriculture committee  In terms of that, while we didn't close any research centre, like where we have our large...we had the closure in the area of Winnipeg; the program has been transferred—

Agriculture committee  —to Morden, using our modern facilities at Morden and Brandon, basically. But the program did not change. We had a few farms that were closed across the country, but they were part of the satellite farms linked to a station.

Agriculture committee  In terms of the value added, we have two centres that focus in the area of food research—i.e., transforming the material into food products. Those two centres are Guelph and Saint-Hyacinthe. A number of the clusters have elements of value added; they tend to cover the entire cha

Agriculture committee  We may have a partnership with industries that are in the manufacturing of food products. They may then have an element deployed partly at Saint-Hyacinthe through which they may be adding value to pulse crops, for example. We have some of that as part of the continuum, because wh

Agriculture committee  In terms of our own material, the bulk of our commercialization in the department comes from crop varieties, for which we have a clear system. We have some protections for the varieties in the country and we go through a request for proposal, asking people to bid on the varieties