Finance committee  It varies considerably depending on the region. You'd find some farmers, for example, in northern Alberta near the oil patch, would be making.... For a typical farm, not operator, but someone to work on the farm would be paid wage rates upward of $25 to $30 an hour. This is a wage paid just to find people to bring onto the farm.

Finance committee  I think on each ask it varies. A number of the tax provisions we speak to are cost neutral. They're more about addressing red tape that exists in the system and some of the unintended accounting difficulties that arise. For example, the changes on labour policy are more about changing the policy environment and some of the incentives, I guess, that are being sent to producers currently, or rather, the amount of information available to them.

Finance committee  It was Bill C-691.

Finance committee  I think it's hard to put one definitive number on it. As a group that represents so many diverse commodity groups and different structures of farms, that number probably varies from commodity to commodity. We did a study about two years ago looking at some of the major residual risks facing Canadian agriculture, and labour came out at the very top of that list in terms of an upcoming constraint that is going to limit our ability to capitalize on some of the emerging trade opportunities that we're seeing.

Finance committee  Thank you. I'd like to put out there that this is not a subject matter that I'm an expert in. I know from speaking with my colleagues and our members that the role of the CFIA in food safety has gained prominence in recent years, largely because of an increased level of attention on where our food comes from for the Canadian consumer and from the expert side.

Finance committee  Thank you. The last two items I'd briefly like to speak to involve agricultural investments. This is speaking to the continued increase of requirements placed on producers because of climate change and trends in retail food markets that have posed increased investment requirements on farm operations without an associated premium in the market.

Finance committee  He is. I want to extend his regrets. He tried to get in from the Soo today and was caught up due to the weather. I'd first like to introduce the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. We're an umbrella organization comprising provincial farm organizations and national commodity organizations representing over 200,000 farmers from coast to coast to coast.