Mr. Chair, thank you in particular for inviting Semex to appear before the committee.
We have three specific recommendations from Semex to bring to the committee, but before turning to them, I'd like to first explain what Semex is and then talk about the environment within which Semex is working in terms of research and innovation.
The Semex Alliance was created about 30 years ago to market Canadian dairy genetics. It is owned by three organizations, le Centre d'insémination artificielle du Québec, Eastgen in Ontario, and Westgen, which is based in British Columbia.
Semex markets dairy and beef genetics in more than 100 different countries. It's mostly bull semen and embryos. We have been quite successful. Our market share outside of Canada has been increasing in recent years. We have about 70% in Canada and 20% worldwide.
We benefit from the fact that Canada has a very good reputation in livestock genetics throughout the world. Besides export, I should mention too that genetic improvement is a key for the dairy industry, because it accounts for 60% to 70% of productivity gains over the long term. Genetic improvement is slow, but it has a huge impact on our industry.
Semex relies a lot on research and innovation. We invest in research in particular for genomics, genomic evaluation methods, resistance to disease, and reproductive technologies. I've provided in the brief a few examples of success stories for the research that we've undertaken. In particular, we have been one of the pioneers in the application of genomics in dairy cattle.
We invest in research directly or we invest through the Canadian Dairy Network, which is a consortium of organizations that are interested in dairy cattle genetic improvement. Then we fund some NSERC projects, NSERC being the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. We also support positions in universities.
For us, research is essential, because without it, I don't think we could keep ahead of the competition. We have research partners both in Canada and outside of Canada, but for this presentation I would like to talk about our Canadian partners, which are primarily governments and universities.
In terms of government, there is very little left in the research branch of Agriculture Canada in this crucial area of livestock genetics and genomics. The branch considerably reduced its involvement in livestock genomics over the last 20 years, particularly in 1994 and 1995 but also since then, with the expectation that the Canadian universities would pick up the slack.
Last year, in fact, the research branch cut the positions of two scientists working with the industry, including one scientist who had just received a prestigious international award. So there is relatively little left in the research branch in our field.
On their side, Canadian universities have been in a financial bind, apart from a few exceptions. In fact, we are facing a brain drain in the area of livestock genetics research in Canada, contrary to what we had maybe 15 years ago, when scientists came from all over the world to universities such as Guelph, for example.
I have given some specific examples of this brain drain that has appeared in the last five years. As a result, the ability of the industry to do research in Canada has dwindled. This is a problem for two reasons. In order to participate in international research consortia you need to bring something to the table. The other reason is that it's difficult to have an edge on the competition with something unique, if the only research you do is in cooperation with other countries. You want to have something different in order to do well in the market. So we need some domestic research capability.
On the positive side, the industry has been able to take advantage through Dairy Farmers of Canada—you just heard Bill Emmott—of the dairy cluster research program, which is part of the Growing Forward 2 initiative. The program will allow the industry to initiate research for new traits in genomics for the next four years, but it's still very far from what is required to compete with our main competitors in the U.S. and Europe. That's where our main competitors are located, and the lack of scientists available in Canada to carry out these projects is really a big handicap.
Finally, Genome Canada, to their credit, contributed in 2004 to the international bovine sequencing project, and that was a very good decision; however, since then they have supported very little in dairy cattle genomics. We are concerned by this lack of support, because we think that in the longer term it will reduce our capability to innovate.
We have three recommendations to make to the committee.
The first one is that Genome Canada should start again to invest in dairy cattle genomics research in cooperation with the industry, particularly in research for novel traits, such as feed efficiency, greenhouse gases, cow health, and properties of milk for human health. All of these areas are very important for the future of the industry, and there is a great potential to make progress in them with genomics.
The second recommendation is that there should be some joint planning between industry, universities, and governments to ensure long-term funding of livestock genetics and genomics research and to stop, stem, or reduce the existing brain drain.
Finally, in our opinion, the federal government, in cooperation with provinces, should put as much emphasis on programs to help attract, hire, and retain high-quality personnel for research and teaching in Canadian universities as it does on programs to support bricks and mortar in those universities. Although there is nothing particularly wrong with doing that, it would be useful to have a better balance. Perhaps university access to Canada Foundation for Innovation grants, for example, could be tied to a university's maintaining or increasing the research staff necessary to take full advantage of the new infrastructure. This doesn't necessarily mean more money, just a better balance between infrastructure and grey matter.
I thank the committee for having me here as a witness. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.