Thank you, Chair.
It's great to be back at the finance committee. I sat through a few of these meetings for a period of time.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the measures in the bill supporting Canada's world-class agriculture and food sector. However you measure it, our agriculture and food industry is a core economic driver in this country.
In my home province of Prince Edward Island and right across the country, the sector drives one in nine jobs, more than $100 billion of our exports and $150 billion of our GDP. It also puts food on tables in Canada and in almost 200 countries around the world.
Whether it's a farm in Saskatchewan or a food processor in Ontario, agriculture is first and foremost a business. That's why we need to take an economic lens to every decision we make to advance the sector, just as our farmers and food processors do in their businesses. That's exactly the approach this bill is taking.
I'll briefly give you examples of agriculture in the food context.
On regulatory reform, the key measure that has been welcomed by everyone in the sector is the commitment to change the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's mandate to consider food security and food costs. This change in mandate acknowledges the dual role of the agency as an enabler for trade and a rigorous protector of health and safety. The CFIA does an outstanding job of building Canada's brand reputation for safe, high-quality food. That's the message I hear when I sit down with our customers in key markets around the world.
However, when I'm sitting down with farmers across the country, they always identify regulatory issues as one of the key barriers to our competitiveness. They are looking to us to streamline requirements, to modernize outdated rules and to identify unnecessary administrative burden.
There's no question that we need effective regulations to keep our food supply safe and to maintain our reputation around the world for outstanding food safety and food quality. Health and safety requirements are absolutely essential for market access. At the same time, we need to make sure that our regulations don't unnecessarily hamper our farmers' abilities to compete in the global marketplace. That's the balance that these proposed amendments to Bill C-30 are providing.
In closing, I'll touch on some other measures in the update that were very welcome news for the sector.
The first is up to $7 billion in new capital for agritech innovation in the sector, which is committed by Farm Credit Canada and more than 20 investment organizations. Next is the development of a national food security strategy to strengthen domestic food production and improve access to affordable, nutritious food. There is also $5 billion to modernize Canada's trade infrastructure to help exporters, including agri-food exporters, diversify their trade to new markets around the world.
Madam Chair, the agriculture measures in this bill are needed more urgently than ever, given the unprecedented challenges our producers are facing: high operating costs for fertilizer, fuel and other inputs; tariffs and other trade barriers with some of our key trading partners; and extreme weather conditions, from droughts to flooding.
Our hard-working farmers can compete with the best the world can throw at them, but they need us, as government, to give them the tools to do that. The kinds of tools we see in this bill and in the economic update are an effective and efficient regulatory system, investments and innovation in the supply chain, and a food security strategy to help our farmers continue to feed Canada and the world.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I look forward to the discussion.