Thank you.
At the University of Manitoba we have strategically invested in six key areas of research and development. And I think there is an opportunity for alignment of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada activities in Manitoba on several fronts, to be able to develop national leadership in student training, research, technology transfer, commercialization, and outreach. That is not to say that both parties need to be engaged in all activities, but combined they can support this continuum.
These areas also would be expected to contribute to the provincial or regional, or in some cases national, risk management strategies that might be associated with the changing environment in which our producers and processors are operating, whether we're talking about changing markets, changing societal expectations, or, again, weather patterns.
The areas in Manitoba where we have significant investment include the area of livestock and the environment, where Manitoba is leading in areas such as greenhouse gas, nutrient management, food safety, and water management for integrated livestock crop production systems. There is also good strength here in the area of functional foods and nutraceuticals, in crop and plant health, in development in the area of entomology, which we see as very important if we look at changes in how our environment will be behaving, how climate and weather will be behaving in the future, and, finally, in the development of a sustainable by-products sector.
The fifth area is related to something that we are seeing on this campus and several other campuses across Canada. Increasingly, universities are entering into a dialogue with remote and aboriginal communities. This serves as a unique opportunity for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to link with such entities as Aboriginal Affairs, or the appropriate provincial department, and our agriculture-based universities, to enter into a dialogue towards a nutritional security or, if you will, a nutrition for health strategy in Canada's remote and aboriginal communities.
These would be the recommendations that we'd like to bring forward to the committee.