Agriculture committee  I invite some research to be done by the committee analysts, but I believe the information would indicate that perhaps as many as 75% to 80% of Canadians don't really read labels very often unless it says “new” or “improved” or they've never seen the product before. It's a very low level, as I understand it, but there are data out there.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to comment on that. I spoke about misalignment, and that is the misalignment in what is actually being done in terms of active outreach to consumers. There may well be good partnerships with members of the Retail Council who are dealing with consumer education, but we really aren't seeing that consumers are becoming more informed, in my opinion.

Agriculture committee  Practice is always important. Go ahead, please.

Agriculture committee  Nationally, the industry has about 53 milling establishments. I should have said that the companies mill wheat, oats, and barley into wheat flour and other mill wheat products like oatmeal. Of the 53, our members account for 29 or 30 establishments. The other 23 are typically very small enterprises, a number of them family-owned.

Agriculture committee  I will provide some submissions to the clerk that explain this. They're not ours. They're from the Baking Association of Canada, but we've had input. The Canadian Community Health Survey provides extensive data on dietary intake. That most recent data was not applied in Health Canada's current consultations on nutrition.

Agriculture committee  We have to look at the Government of Canada's numbers carefully and incorporate them into a food policy, and that survey is completed about every 10 years.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Last week before the transport committee I spoke about just-in-time delivery. My apologies for being, almost, quite late. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee. To date, our association has not prepared a formal submission. My comments today are intended to provide a broader perspective of elements of a national food policy that are already in existence and that need to be taken into account in consideration of what could be a more clearly defined new national policy.

Transport committee  Railways used to own milling companies and big milling companies. I have just come from our annual conference from a hotel that used to also be held in part by railways. Those integrations were gone decades and decades ago. We have just had a meeting for the first time in my 28-year history where railways were not represented there, not because we're at war with one another.

Transport committee  Very few, in fact. I can't think of a case in point. Most milling establishments that are of some age have been situated predominantly close to the populations as opposed to in rural parts of the country. The majority of milling capacity is close to the population in the eastern one-third of North America.

Transport committee  Frequent, no, but it's not unheard of, however. I think what you've touched on is very important. We're going to have a bumper crop every year from now on, and we're going to have weird winters a lot more often than we've had them in the past, based on our experience of recent years, so the demand for service is going up, and predictability is highly important.

Transport committee  Are you talking to me?

Transport committee  I'll try to take as little time as possible. Essentially, in order to serve customers in the milling industry well, you don't need just one type of wheat of a particular origin, you need a number of them. You have to have an inventory of all of those at all times. You can't have the kind of interruption we experienced some years ago that affected so many mills adversely in North America.

Transport committee  To comment on long haul, it was a disappointment that the extended interswitching rates were not extended, and others have expressed that before this committee, I'm sure—I read a couple of the submissions. There has also been an observation that there is a prerequisite in order to have access to long-haul interswitching rights, and we would support others who would have recommended that that be removed.

Transport committee  I would add that growers have spoken today about the future, and the future for producers of all crops including wheat is that the crop genetics and agricultural practices will see a continuous line of growth in the commodities that need to be moved. In contrast, we're not going to see such robust growth, because of population growth, in Canada—it's a little below that in the United States.

Transport committee  Just a quick comment. Trucking is not an alternative to moving grains out of Prairie provinces into processing facilities anywhere else in Canada. It's impractical for reasons of costs, in addition to those of logistics.