Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for your question. The $4.4 million that you've alluded to is from the genomic research and development initiative. This is an interdepartmental initiative that is led by the National Research Council. It really involves a number of departments, including AAF

Agriculture committee  We have had a lot of impact in terms of trade, in terms of the work that we do with our industry partners. The fact that there are clusters that exist within the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada partnership really sends the signal that without AAFC scientists, we would not be abl

Agriculture committee  We have collaborative agreements with industry and academia partners. We have an intellectual property office within the science and technology branch that is consumed with that kind of work. These collaborative agreements are put together very much earlier within the process, wh

Agriculture committee  Chair, I'm not really understanding the issue of the trend line. Through the two collaborative agreements—

Agriculture committee  With respect to the science we generate within AAFC, that is all public information. It's based on information that is published through peer-reviewed journals. We have “Innovation Express”, which publishes the work that is done by AAFC with scientists. Within the collaborative a

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the question. The science and technology website talks about some of the work we do in strategic science, and how we identify the areas where the research dollars are going. We have a very elaborate and robust process for calls for proposals that come in

Agriculture committee  Just in terms of bringing that forward, with respect to carinata being a concrete example of where we are working with industry, this is obviously going to take a few years, but the fact that there is a partnership that allows for some development of intellectual property, that p

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for your question. I'd just like to respond with a few examples of some of the work that the science and technology branch does with industry in terms of industry-led clusters. When we look at canola, canola is an excellent example of the science and technol

Agriculture committee  I will certainly defer the dollar issue to my colleague, Pierre Corriveau. Let me talk a little bit about the research numbers right now. The number of research scientists we have is about 387. In the department there are about 2,000 employees within science and technology, whic

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. I just want to go back to your question and the rationale for the decision to close a number of sites across Canada. Really, from a science perspective, it's being able to make the best use of our resources and being able to really create a critical mass of

Agriculture committee  Let me start by talking a little bit about consolidation. When we looked at consolidation and at where we had streamlined, it was only where the sector had the capacity to be supported and there were partners there to support the sector. We got out of programs only in areas for

Agriculture committee  Right. For example, if you have identified a certain bioactive compound that is nutritional, you want to make sure that as you develop that particular compound, perhaps in food, you've looked at quality, and you have a mechanism to provide that information to the stakeholders tha

Agriculture committee  Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  Exactly.

Agriculture committee  Let me start with some of the whole knowledge transfer aspects of the science and technology branch. I mentioned that in 2012 we merged the PFRA, or the AESB, with the research branch. We had two branches where, in AESB, we had a specific element of what was called “knowledge t