Agriculture committee  Yes, I would say that decarbonizing our agri-food economy could become a competitive advantage over time. How we do that is obviously up for debate. I'm more of a carrot believer than a stick believer, to be honest. I think we need a mixture of both. Right now all we see and, I would say, probably all the industry is seeing is a stick.

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely. My colleague Stacey Taylor mentioned earlier the importance of collecting data and good data. This is something we're missing in Canada. To create a dialogue to get everyone on board about an issue as important as the environment, you need data. Right now, there's little of it.

Agriculture committee  I assume that you're talking about price volatility at retail. Is that correct?

Agriculture committee  Okay. We don't see any immediate volatility due to carbon pricing in Canada. In fact, if you look at months when the tax actually goes up—so in April, May and June—there's actually little volatility, so we don't see evidence of that. However, like I said, over time, over several years, we could actually force companies to see their costs increase and become less competitive.

Agriculture committee  It gets complicated.

Agriculture committee  I wrote that piece because Europe, I think, is sending us a message. This could actually happen eventually in Canada if we continue to not listen to price-takers. Farmers do not control anything. They're very vulnerable. They need to be heard. Most importantly, they need to be understood.

Agriculture committee  I certainly share your concern. The 50% discount became news because we actually emailed Loblaw ourselves in January because we were hearing rumours. We basically emailed Loblaw and asked if it was true that the 50% discount policy was ending at Loblaw. They confirmed that it was actually being rolled out as of January 14 of something.

Agriculture committee  That's right, yes. I meant the amendments, absolutely. The spirit of the bill, of course, was important, but the amendments were not good news.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Prices will rise, suppliers will increase their own prices to compensate for the additional costs, and the consumer will end up footing the bill.

Agriculture committee  In my opinion, the issue is not even up for debate: the code won’t work without the mandatory participation of all industry players. Personally, I don’t see how a code could work without Walmart and Loblaws. We need some leadership from Ottawa and the provinces. In my opinion, it’s better not to have a code at all if Loblaws and Walmart don’t participate.

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  Not always, no.

Agriculture committee  Sometimes environmental conditions are favourable to production. We see that.

Agriculture committee  We can't forget that we're doing a lot of research to help farmers grow more. Yields are going up and all of that. We need that research to continue. In lockstep with what's been happening with climate change, we've actually been supportive of the industry to cope with climate change overall.