Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here.
Looking through the main estimates, we can see a number of cuts happening in the department. At this point it looks like there could be a decrease of nearly 6% over last year's previous estimates. One of the major ones is the Canadian Grain Commission, which is facing a cut of almost 85%. There are other things in the business risk management area, but let me look at the piece around the Canadian Grain Commission.
We're hearing from farmers about issues with contracts. They are not understanding the contracts because they're opaque, not quite understanding the transition from the Wheat Board, whether it be voluntary or not. It is difficult for them. There's a whole slew of issues around those, and now we see the Grain Commission with a major cut.
Now we hear today through Viterra that they are being looked at as a potential takeover target by Glencore, which will be a foreign-based multinational.
With all this uncertainty in the market for grain farmers—and now the one major Canadian player might actually evaporate, get taken over by a multinational corporation whose headquarters, quite frankly, are not in this country—do we see that as a major issue? Where do we think that's going to take grain farmers, and where it will end up? First, could you look at that question?
Let me ask the second question, because I know, Minister, we have a limited amount of time. The second question concerns the CFIA. We also see that at present there's a budget cut anticipated of $33.5 million on top of the already $18 million that sunsets due to the listeriosis crisis. Notwithstanding your comments, Minister, we don't have a sense of how we can do things differently to protect the Canadian public from another outbreak of listeriosis that we witnessed a number of years ago. We know—we absolutely, unequivocally know—that only 2% of imported products into this country are actually inspected when they come across the border. It's not an equivalency; it's not the same as in Canada, where we do what we have to do for export. We don't do the same thing for imports. It's not the same.
Based on that, Minister, can you explain to us why we see these targeted cuts to these two areas, when indeed perhaps what we ought to see is at least a flat-line budget, if not an increase?