Good afternoon. I will make a general presentation like the one that Mr. Bilodeau made. You have copies of the document in French and in English; you will certainly have the opportunity to read them. First, I want to thank you for inviting us.
The first phase has to do with food safety and quality. Let me first speak of the general expectations that were identified. Regarding quality and safety systems on the farm, there was a tendency over the past years to do things independently. Each production made its own quality and safety programs for farms, whereas each farm has not only one kind but sometimes several kinds of production. We think that we should proceed in a structured and integrated priority-based approach, which means that the same farm should not have to fill out three series of books of specifications if it has three productions.
When dealing with quality and safety, we cannot avoid mentioning the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. We must make sure that it has the means to supervise everything that has to do with regulating imports, so that the rules imposed by other countries on our exports apply as well to products imported into Canada.
With regard to regulating imports, we must make sure that when a product comes into Canada, it is up to our standards. Therefore, we must enable the agency to do so. Our approval system is not very well harmonized with that in the United States. There are products that can be used in the United States but not in Canada, which is not at the advantage of our producers. Often, this is because there is not enough critical mass of Canadian producers to perform all the tests on a national scale, and thus, these products will never be accessible to our producers. While we continue protecting the Canadian public, we must ensure better harmonization between the systems.
Regarding science and innovation, the documents that were published up until now seem interesting to us. There are many references to innovation. The UPA believes that it is important to focus on innovation, and we are doing a great deal of work on that. On the other hand, we must not neglect other sectors of research and development. We should not focus on one single link in the chain, when dealing with innovation. We must work on all the aspects together, through research, development and innovation, and then we must transfer the knowledge to farms so that Canadian producers can have access to the best available technology. We also want to ensure continuity with the work done in the past.
Mr. Bilodeau spoke about renewal and all the programs for assisting the new generation of farmers. I think that this morning you heard Mr. Benoît Martin, from the Fédération de la relève agricole, who raised the issue. This matter is of great concern to us. Generally, we believe that investment must be made in the renewal of counselling services in support of agricultural producers. Therefore, we must support producers in terms of knowledge and farm management. In Quebec, we have set up a support network, with counselling services in every region.
It is important for farms to have counselling services, but if we want quality, the counsellors must have access to knowledge and support.
Generally speaking in Quebec, as far as the environment is concerned, we wish that the Canadian government would recognize the expertise that has been developed in the province, particularly within the IRDA in terms of research, therefore that it would work with the various organizations that are close to agricultural producers and consultants.
Earlier on, we were also talking about flexibility. One program that is unique to Quebec is the special goose scaring program. I believe it was mentioned this morning. In our opinion, that is a way to show flexibility. We had a program; it was somewhat challenged. For the producers affected by the migration of snow geese, this is an essential program and it should continue.
I will move on now to risk management. This is the final component. Mr. Bilodeau and Mr. Lavoie appeared before the committee here in Ottawa a few weeks ago. We were sent the information that they presented to you, so we will not repeat it. This is an issue of the greatest importance for the Union des producteurs agricoles, particularly the whole issue of the funding of Quebec companion programs by the federal government .
As far as the market is concerned, there is the whole issue of product labelling. The Canadian government has put a great deal of effort into branding Canada, but we cannot always be sure that products with the word "Canada" appearing on the label are really Canadian products that meet quality and safety controls and environmental standards. These products could be imported . This must be part of the next policy, to ensure that when we talk about Canadian products, we are truly talking about products made in Canada.