Thank you.
That is an elegant summary of the challenges we face.
I have three points. On your reference to the European Commission's biofuels directive that was released in January, we studied that closely and we studied it quickly. It has obviously substantial implications for Canadian biodiesel, in the case of our industry, to the extent that a fair bit of biodiesel and biodiesel feedstocks, namely canola, are shipped from Canada to Europe right now. The Europeans were really targeting a very specific set of criteria they would consider to be unsustainable. They would target palm from recently deforested areas and places of high biodiversity. They would target soybean that was grown in Brazil or Argentina from lands that really are grassland and are fallow and would be taken into production, hence you would lose the carbon sinks in those.
I think you need to look very carefully. I concur with you. I don't think very many people in this industry got into it to see the result of their work be a destruction of habitat. Canadian-produced feedstocks on the biodiesel side will more than match the criteria the EU is setting up. We will not be taking grassland under cultivation to expend that. If you look at the Canola Council of Canada's website and information they put out, there are advances in agronomy, in yield science, in crop science, that will be able to deliver the increase in oil that's required for a biodiesel mandate. We produce 9 million to 10 million tonnes of oilseed, of canola, a year and we're going to be requiring about 900,000 tonnes, about 10% of that, to do the kind of crop we need for the renewable fuel standard.
We really do need to consider Canada. I am aware of this all the time. We get the broad international signals about going slowly on biofuels and we broadbrush Canada. We would be bringing about a very unfortunate situation if we were not to consider what Canada has. Canada's crops will favour very well under international sustainability criteria. We know that from participating in it.
I have one last comment on the topic. As I sit beside this high-definition television with its flat-screen panel, I don't think we said 20 years ago we were going to hold on cathode ray tubes because something better is down the road. Everybody who has studied the adoption of new technologies or, in the case of new biofuels, new fuels has said you have to have an industry on whose shoulders to stand. If we hold off on the first generation, it will deter the adoption of the really smart biofuels that we all agree are not going to compete with food and won't compromise agricultural areas, as an example.