Thanks for the question. I'll see if Scott has anything to add at the end.
A big driving force behind the ACA coming to fruition was that, after December 2020, “A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy” had around 65 bullet points, many of which had an agri-environmental focus. Shortly thereafter, there was a big webinar with ECCC around nature-based climate solutions. There were hundreds of people on the line and perhaps two or three agriculture stakeholders.
We like to be permissive rather than prescriptive, but the current venues—working group-wise or round table-wise—do not work. We need to be able to engage in a pragmatic, proactive and collaborative way further upstream. When I hear about that level of collaboration.... That's exactly what we want. We need a way to work directly with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada—with those who have sufficient seniority within both of those departments—and to have the right farm groups and producer groups around the table, to ensure that the policies rolling out are applicable. We often get into this cubicle or regulatory mind-making in Ottawa or Gatineau—and I'm part of that—but it's not applicable to the 20 million canola acres, or to the beef farms and dairy farms across Canada.
We need some way to engage meaningfully at a “small p” policy level. We're not there to talk political realities, but we are there to talk about how the government's goals can align with the farmers', and how pragmatic policy can actually be achieved. I think that's something we do not currently have.
We defer to the government on how they want to implement that. There has been discussion about a joint role between Ag Canada and ECCC. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Ag Canada have a joint position. I'll pause there and see if Scott has anything else to add, Mr. MacGregor, but it's great to see that. That's how we're going to accomplish our goals.