Thank you. It's nice to be here.
It's really a privilege to have the opportunity to appear before the agriculture committee, and particularly to address this subject on the part of the College of Agriculture and Bioresources. I've been in association with the college to some extent for over seven years. I have really valued not only the work of the college but also the whole ag-bio cluster, which I think is important to keep in mind when we're looking at what is happening in this area.
One of the biggest challenges I hear across the board is to have funding in place to enable the development of these technologies that are vital to our future. My job in the college is fundraising, and I can tell you that there are some unique challenges in fundraising in our environment today. We definitely need our governments, provincial and federal, on board to help build the infrastructure that enables these technologies to progress.
We have seen a tremendous shift in our taxation picture in this country over many years. There is less and less corporate and capital tax, and the benefit of that shift is certainly there for the corporations. We can see it in the banks' profit numbers and corporate profit numbers. However, there has not been a corresponding shift in the amount of money they are putting into these vital developments. As the public purse is reduced through the changes in taxation, there is also less available from the corporate structure, so we turn to our federal and provincial governments, clearly, with the reality that we need your support in terms of making these very vital technologies move forward.
When I talk about ag biotech, I'm talking about a whole lot of tools, as Bert so well put it, that we have and that we have been working at developing, tools that are vital not only to our future economy here but vital also, I believe, to the future of the world.
When we look at the largest challenges in the world, we're looking at environmental challenges, climate extreme challenges, and population growth. When I look at the work that is happening around this ag-bio cluster, I see it as essential for us to be working in each of these areas.
In the area of the environment, we are looking to develop plant products and products around our soils that will mitigate environmental problems and remediate those problems. For oil sands and for some of our mining areas, we are developing effective plant remediation. If we're going to be developing in these ways, we have to be able to mitigate the impacts.
One of the other key areas that we are working on in terms of ag biotech is adaptation. We know that with climate extremes and changes in our environment, over the last decade we have seen a number of pests that have never been here before moving further into our hemisphere. We need to be able to adapt in what we're doing, but we also need to be able to enable adaptation of our plants. We do that through our breeding programs. We do the same with our animals. How do we help the animals become more resistant to disease? How do we help our plants become more resistant, as others have said, to drought, to frost, and--in these days, Brad--to excess moisture? These are all things that are happening at our college.
Finally, there's production. With the world population projected as it is, we are going to need to increase our food production dramatically. The research and development work we're doing at the college is about increasing production and making sure production is secure by making our plants and animals more resistant.
These are vital activities, but in order to do this work, we absolutely must have the infrastructure, and that infrastructure costs significant dollars.
I can say that over the last decade, we've had some very effective partnerships from the province and the federal government. We took the wedge funding under the agricultural policy framework and applied all of that--$54 million--to research in this area. It benefited a number of the organizations that you heard about today. It helped build some of our most productive infrastructure, which you'll tour later, such as the crop development centre and the new grains innovation lab.
Many of these benefited from that funding, but it needs to be ongoing. It can't be one shot, and then we feel good about it and it's done. We need to continue to have the best equipment and the best infrastructure if we're really going to develop in the way that we very clearly need to develop.
Today one of the greatest demands I hear when I'm meeting with corporate and other people in the ag-bio sector and the food sector is their need for our graduates. They need knowledgeable graduates. In biotech, our students are probably the greatest bioproduct that we can deliver to this world. These are the students who are researchers, the students who are very well educated and who have had that opportunity to work with people like Bert, Jill, Bill, and Mary and really understand what is needed to move forward in this whole area of ag biotech.
Also, we must have the facilities. We must have both the educational facilities, which I know are outside of the federal purview, and the facilities for research that will draw them in. We have to be able to provide them with a good education. That's foundational, so today when we're looking at what's foundational about the College of Agriculture and Bioresources, we keep in mind that education and the development of new researchers are key aspects.
We have a shortage of plant breeders. I think I've heard that from a number of people. The only way we're going to counter that shortage is by having very good educational systems and infrastructure that draw them in and enable them to learn.
Today in our college, we have three major projects under way. We have the new phytotron renewal, an upgrade of the phytotron, which I'm not sure you'll get a chance to see today. I know that some of you have seen it. That is our controlled environment plant growth facility. It gives us three full cycles a year. It's absolutely essential as one of our biotechnology tools that enables plant breeding. If we don't have that up and running at capacity, the impact on the economy is huge. Delaying some of those new developments in plants by just a few years has a huge economic impact.
We have a need for a new dairy facility and we are working at developing it. Now, people will say that the dairy industry in Saskatchewan isn't that big, and it isn't, but this facility and the research it does have an impact on at least all of western Canada. It's used by the veterinary college, which trains veterinarians for all of western Canada and for all of Canada, really. Also, there are huge dairy herds in B.C., where we draw a lot of people from, and they are people who are going to be going through the training, so although it may not seem that essential at first glance, it's essential in terms of its broader impact in the whole cluster. The research going on at VIDO-InterVac is using the animals that we have there as well.
Our third project, a new beef facility--which I think is key as well--shares some of the same areas with the dairy. We've heard about the impacts of BSE and how far down it took our beef industry, which was, I would have to say, growing nicely at the time BSE hit. In this province we have recognized that we need to do more than just produce cows and calves and then ship the feed off to Alberta, where they're fed and finished. It's part of what John was talking about: we need to be able to do the full cycle here, and that full cycle includes doing the research related to feeding and finishing cattle. We need a facility that does research and also does outreach to the public. We need to hold public schools for cattle feeders and farmers who are working in that area.
We need to be able to provide premium beef by having the genetics of what we are feeding those cattle and the genetics of the cattle combine to get the best products. Cargill's Sterling Silver beef is their ultra-premium beef, and if they know that the genetics are right and that the feed is right as these cattle come through the system, then they know that the cattle are going to fit within that Sterling Silver beef category.
We have to have support for the foundational pieces, and it doesn't come generally from private industry. If we're going to advance in biotech, if we're going to meet those world needs, we must have the foundation, and that foundation is a good, solid, and continually upgraded infrastructure that will draw and encourage our students into this area and will enable us to produce graduates and postgraduates capable of doing incredible work in helping to move this whole area of biotech forward.
When you hear some of the returns on investments in this area, you know that it's only going to be good for our economy. When we see a follow-up on elements of our regulatory systems so that we don't have to do the registration in another country and we can get the product on line within two or three years instead of waiting five years or longer, I think that we'll have made some significant progress.
Your committee can have an impact by taking these pieces forward, by pressuring decision-makers to make sure the money is put in the right places. A big concern for us was seeing NSERC pulled back from its grants for food.