Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
It's great to be here, to have an opportunity to sit on the ag committee, and to talk about a topic that is very important to Alberta.
Listening to some of the discussions that have taken place, I keep thinking about the difference between a research scientist and a political scientist. There's no way a research scientist will ever say there is no risk. Of course, being able to not guarantee, that is where the political scientist then moves in. I think it's important, and of course some of the things you have spoken about kind of tie into that.
Mr. Smyth, you had spoken of the certified seed and that type of thing. I am a farmer, so I understand that aspect of it. You had mentioned that there are limits up to 0.25% as far as off grades that might be in that particular seed that you get from a certified seed provider. The multiplier effect, though, should still be 0.25% after you have run it through your crop process and so on.
Could you comment on that? Of course, that's where some of the issues do come in, unless it has such better viability that it's going to be higher than the actual seed that you thought you were going to buy. At any rate, that's part of it, and I'd like to get a feel for some of the research you have done in that regard.
There are a couple of other things, just so people will recognize the significance of some of this. If you're buying that certified seed, and you're then transferring from barley to wheat, for example, the farmer is in there and they are ripping that truck apart. They are making sure that they have gotten every kernel out of it. There could have been 40 million kernels in that truck, but they are not satisfied with the one kernel that's going to be in there.
It's the same type of thing when you are delivering your grain in the fall to your grain elevators. You have to make sure that the truckers are going to state what kind of grain was in it, or the last product that was handled in it.
You have a certain security, but then, on the other side, you have the situation where people are saying there is zero tolerance, we can't have anything. I mean, you could pick up a seed on the truck as you drive into the elevator. These are the kinds of things that are, in my mind, so nonsensical when we're talking about this concept of the political scientist versus the research scientist.
I'm wondering if you can talk about that, and then about the trade disruptions and the concerns that exist in that regard. That's another thing that I think is so critical for us to be able to talk about.