Agriculture Committee on Feb. 26th, 2026

[Alison Sunstrum]

Absolutely.

We're using comparisons today, and if we look at the Netherlands, which we could fit inside the province of Nova Scotia, we know they have boosted their agribusiness exports amazingly. They compete well beyond the level that Canada competes at.

As for investing in research, innovation is actually a combination of invention times commercialization times adoption. In Canada, we are very good at invention, but we are very poor at the latter two.

I think we attract private financing when we have solid public investment or invention to build upon. I cannot stress enough how research and development promotes our economic engine. With the amount of money we invest, we must move to a trifecta where we are incorporating public research, which provides the foundation, and then incentivizing capital to come to Canada, because we have an agile regulatory regime and an environment, as I said, that can spur on investment. This is Canada's greatest generational opportunity.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I really like the consistency of your vision.

Rickey Yada, Dean of the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Alberta, said that the loss of research centres was dramatic. At the end of his testimony, he emphasized the importance of creating a shared database to enable researchers to pool their information so that they can work together rather than work in isolation.

Do you think this is a strategy that should be promoted?

[Alison Sunstrum]

I think anything about data and virtual connectivity is very important, but I believe that with the tools that exist today with AI, we can be in different centres and be highly creative in communicating with data, so Rickey is correct in his assumption.

I believe we have the strength in AI, given that we have the literal godfathers and grandfathers of AI sitting at the University of Toronto, the Université de Montréal and the University of Alberta. We must take what we invest in other sectors and embed it into our economic engines.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. McCann, I would also like to hear your opinion on the importance of having access to open and multiple data in the field of agriculture.

[Tyler McCann]

It’s essential. One of the challenges we face today is that we don’t really have a system that works together. There are universities across the country, there are public and private research centres, but there’s no real way for us all to work together.

I think it’s not just the fact that we’re closing research centres that’s problematic. It’s also the way they’re being closed. It’s the fact that there isn’t really a plan for the next few years. A decision has been made, and there’s an obligation to act and find solutions in the coming weeks. The impact would have been less severe if the government had told us that, in the coming years, we would be required to make cuts and work together. However, that is not how the decision was made.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I feel that the private sector has its place in research, of course, but as I said, the pursuit of profit is inevitable. Sectors such as soil health, or even biological productivity, seem to me to be more difficult to finance through the private sector.

How can we ensure that private industry is also keen to improve our knowledge in the biological field?

[Tyler McCann]

It is essential to think of the innovation system as a system. In some parts of the system, public investment is mandatory because there is no private sector interest. However, in other parts of the system, there is definitely a role for the private sector as well.

The problem is that today, it doesn’t really work as it should. In some places, the public sector sometimes competes with the private sector. There are also places where there is a lack of investment because the public sector is not investing there or because the private sector has no interest in doing so.

We need to think more carefully about the system. It is important to understand that the public and private sectors have very different roles to play.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to the Conservatives for five minutes.

Mr. Bonk, you're up next.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

My questions will be for the Beef Cattle Research Council.

So far in this committee, we've taken more of a 30,000-foot view of how these cuts to our agricultural research centres will affect the framework of how we do research in Canada. Is it possible to drill down a bit on what is being affected? How does research that you're doing have an impact on the Canadian cattle producers and, by extension, worldwide?

I know of the good work you're doing on TB vaccines, for example. What I'm really interested in is the genomic work you're doing in feedlots on the microbiome for antimicrobial resistance or the good work that Dr. John Ellis is doing on BRD.

Could you talk a bit more about the specifics of why this research is so important and how the biological constraints of generational reproduction in cattle make this research so important that it needs stability to go on in an ongoing fashion?

[Andrea Brocklebank]

Well, I think a few of the speakers have mentioned this. One of the points is that research is a pipeline, and one piece is that, honestly, there isn't private incentive to develop it.

Forage breeding is a great example of that. The private sector can't capture the value of it to invest, yet greater forage varieties preserve grasslands that ultimately contribute to public good, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and overall resilience for our producers. That's a great example where we've seen a lot of progress.

When we talk about animal health and genetics, obviously microbes, diseases and all of those things continue to evolve, especially in a global framework. We have to continue to do research and ensure that we're continuing to look at opportunities for vaccination and at mitigation opportunities. That doesn't happen easily or quickly. It's also about having a baseline understanding. We've seen this relative to genomic opportunities but also with regard to things like bovine respiratory disease, as you mentioned, in our feedlot and cow-calf sectors. Added on to that, we see climate impacting those things.

We have a lot of research in the U.S., but we need to make sure that it's relevant in Canada. Whether this means adopting that research and working with those researchers or doing independent work, we need to understand the diversity of Canadian production systems across our country, particularly when it's something like beef production, where you have not only a diversity of climate landscapes but also a diversity in terms of cow-calf, feedlot...background in those.

We cover a lot of areas. We cover animal health, welfare, forages, feeds, food safety and beef quality. We look at it as not picking one of those but managing long term a portfolio investment across all of those areas. We rely heavily on Ag Canada in certain spaces, especially the public-good ones like animal welfare, food safety, quality, and forage and feed production.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

We can look back at some of the work done, for example, by Dr. John Basarab—I believe he was at Lethbridge at the time—on feed efficiency in livestock and EPDs, and what that's done for the beef cattle industry.

Could you talk a little about quantifying some of the financial gains that are made by public research?

[Andrea Brocklebank]

I'll let Reynold feed into that one because he's a lot more knowledgeable on the genomic side.

[Reynold Bergen, Science Director, Beef Cattle Research Council]

A lot of what we're talking about is a continuum. Any sort of improvements in efficiency on the farm, on the animal side, ultimately go back to genetics, and it takes decades for those things to flow through. John Basarab has been working a lot on genomics. A lot of others have been as well, including in some of the programs at Agriculture Canada that were cut in Edmonton recently.

Two researchers at Agriculture Canada in Edmonton have been offered transfers to Lethbridge, which is good. That expertise has been saved, but Lethbridge has no cow herd. It's going to be really difficult for them to maintain progress on genetic improvements in feed efficiency when they don't have resources to work with. I don't know how that's going to work. It will be interesting to find out what the plan or strategy is there.

One of the important points to raise here is that feed efficiency is hugely important in all sectors of the beef industry—both on the ranch and in the feedlot—because it allows you to produce more beef with less feed. It's more profitable that way. When we have more efficient cattle, it also means they're using fewer resources, so there's an environmental benefit to that as well.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

As a really quick follow-up, could you talk about the financial implications of this? What can that produce for the Canadian livestock industry?

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

You have 15 seconds.

[Alison Sunstrum]

Reynold, could I handle that one, please?

[Reynold Bergen]

Knock yourself out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

You have to limit it to 15 seconds, if possible. Thank you.

[Alison Sunstrum]

Okay.

I developed the technology that measured feed intake and feed efficiency, alongside Dr. Basarab and several other researchers across the country. I'm an “overnight success” after 29 years of research and development.

Here's what that meant. It meant that feed was reduced by 12%, methane was—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

We've gone over by 25 seconds. I have to move to the next folks. I apologize.

Next we'll go to MP Connors for five minutes.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Coteau]

Yes, you're good.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

First of all, I want to thank the witnesses for coming out.

My first question is for Ms. Sunstrum.

In your opening remarks, you had three questions, and the third question talked about renewal and strategic leverage. Is there an opportunity now, with some of these closures, to restructure collaboration? If so, how should the government work with the industry to strengthen research and science?

[Alison Sunstrum]

I think we're entering a field of deep science and tech driving everything in agriculture. That's something we really need to understand. It's about the acceleration of crop breeding, leveraging the microbiome, as mentioned, and population-level genomics that can drive what we know about animal behaviour, health and welfare. I think we're missing that opportunity. Indeed, we could restructure. We need to know a map of what we are losing when we close these centres.

I apologize for stepping on Dr. Bergen's moment, but I will tell you that I deeply know—by interacting with researchers and scaling a very successful business—the relationship and connection among producers, farmers and researchers solving the problems in the field. We haven't solved the problems. Every day brings a new problem. That's what we must understand. Every day, climate change is one of our greatest effects. Every day, we are faced with challenges that can only be handled by science and technology.

Investors understand this. I understand this. I am investing in deep science and tech, which will drive the solutions to the problems and the economic engine. I must continue to emphasize what an opportunity we have ahead of us.

[Paul Connors, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

You also mentioned invention times, commercialization times and adoption. You told us that Canada is very good at the invention and innovation piece but not so good at commercialization and adoption.

Research at research facilities is where they usually do the invention and innovation piece. Who should be responsible for the commercialization and adoption piece?