Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.
First of all, I'd like to state that my party and I do not see this as a done deal. I see this as an important step in a direction that needs further exploration.
I believe the whole issue of biofuels needs careful study, because there are some indications, for example, that the direction the United States in is going is not the right direction. Having said that, I appreciate the commitment to producer involvement. We think this is key.
We know about the trend in the United States. The first generation of ethanol plants had something like 30% or 40% producer cooperative involvement. But the next plants--I think it's around a hundred that are being built--have almost no producer involvement. I'm wondering if that's a trend we may see in Canada. In other words, we start with producer involvement, but for one reason or another it decreases, and all of a sudden the industry is taken over by the big companies. Then the producer is left at the mercy of these companies. For example, in Manitoba it's Husky Oil that has two plants.
That's the first question. I'm wondering what the trend is here.
We're seeing the benefits. We're seeing them for farmers. At the same time, we're seeing that this is one of the reasons that life is much harder for pork and cattle producers. So we see the good and the bad, and hopefully this will settle out.
There is research that I and my staff have been doing with regard to the life cycle of biofuels. I'd like to quote from a document called Biofuels: The Five Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition. It says:
But when the full “life cycle” of agro-fuels is considered--from land clearing to automotive consumption--the moderate emission savings are undone by far greater emissions from deforestation, burning, peat drainage, cultivation, and soil carbon losses. Every ton of palm oil produced results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions--10 times more than petroleum. Tropical forests cleared for sugar cane ethanol emit 50 percent more greenhouse gases than the production and use of the same amount of gasoline.
These are examples of what's happening in the southern hemisphere.
I'm wondering what studies have been done to actually look at the whole life cycle, the amount of fossil fuel that goes into the input of growing biofuels, and the transportation costs. Are we really bringing greenhouse gases down? Because we see that this may not be happening in the south.
The last question is whether we are going to be self-sufficient in this, or do you see Canada importing feedstock to promote our bio-industry?
I'll stop. Hopefully you have enough time to answer some of these.