Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, folks, and former colleague of the House of Commons, Elwin.
There's no question that Canada is seen as probably the most reliable supplier of quality grains around the world, and to a great extent it's due to how careful we are in terms of the export of grains.
Mr. White, in your presentation I think you did mention the fact that the industry, and mostly all the industry, didn't want to move on changing KVD until August 1, 2010. There are good reasons for that. However, it's another case of how this government tends to operate. They shoot first and ask questions later. Now we're into August 1, 2008, which could in fact jeopardize the system somewhat.
I have two questions.
First, Mr. Hermanson, you outlined on page six the progress towards technology. So my question is simple. The government has led us to believe, basically, that there is already technology in place, that this can be handled on August 1, 2008. Just to be clear, I don't think there's a danger as yet, because those new products are not on stream, but it would have been far better, I think, because 2010 would have met the timeframe for those new varieties to come on stream without the international community looking at us with somewhat suspicious eyes. Are you saying that the technology is not in place, that it's only under development effective August 1 and absolutely not in place to give us the security that we really require?
The second question relates to page four of Mr. Hermanson's presentation:
At this point, the Committee has determined that a combination of an industry system of declarations, grain company quality management systems and protocols, and monitoring and sampling protocols will be relied upon to ensure the quality of Canadian wheat.
That leads me to believe that the technology is not there, certainly. But secondly, in my area, we know the difficulties you can run into when you ship a product to a foreign country and the quality is questioned. I've seen people lose millions of dollars, even though the quality was there, but for political or other reasons that quality was jeopardized.
So who is going to be liable if some producer, for whatever reason, ships a product that doesn't meet the quality, that goes into the hold of a ship and a portion of that grain is lost? Who is going to be liable for that amount of grain that doesn't meet that quality? What security is there in that declaration? Who will be held responsible for that quality? Will it be the minister who brought in the system; will it be the individual producer; or will it again fall back and be an attack on either the Canadian Grain Commission or the Canadian Wheat Board?