Agriculture committee  Yes. We work quite closely with our colleagues at Environment and Climate Change Canada. We work with our provincial counterparts as well. When we start to look at how we address issues around climate change and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, those are really some of the things we can look at—i.e., what can we do with the provinces to incent farmers to take action to implement practices that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Agriculture committee  The issue of young farmers is critical, particularly when you look at the demographics in the sector and start to see a huge turnover in the coming years. I think one of the key things for young farmers is access to capital. In getting into farming, between looking at the price of land and the capital-intensive nature of farming, that's a key issue.

Agriculture committee  I think that's something we're looking at. We do have innovation programming. A lot of the provinces deliver help with the on-farm investment. I think the issue we're looking at is whether there are specific issues with young farmers such that they need dedicated programs. I think we're trying to investigate as to whether we need dedicated programs.

Agriculture committee  In terms of the $3 billion in overall spending under the framework, that's not necessarily targeted sector by sector. We do have some sense of the innovation spending that has gone to different clusters to support them, but for the most part we don't target individual sectors and we don't always track the funding sector by sector.

Agriculture committee  We have a billion dollars divided by three programs. There's the AgriInnovation program, the AgriMarketing program, and the AgriCompetitiveness program.

Agriculture committee  I think that when we look at those kinds of things, we start to look those as priority areas, and both the federal government and the provincial governments will operate within those spaces. The relative importance of each one might differ, but I think we would see all the jurisdictions contributing to those in one fashion or another.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. Its a tenet of the framework that we set these broad national objectives, but we recognize that the situation in every province is quite different, so we allow the provinces the flexibility to address those national objectives in a way that meets the needs of their producers.

Agriculture committee  No. Our existing Growing Forward 2 framework is split. We call it a $3-billion initiative, and $1 billion of that over the five years currently is spent with federal-only programming. We have three federal-only programming initiatives. The other $2 billion is delivered by the provinces.

Agriculture committee  There are several elements. Some of the people who apply to our programs are businesses. They're looking for investments. They have outside investors. As they're moving forward, I think one concern is the timeliness of decisions. They say they need government to move at the speed of business, which isn't always the case.

Agriculture committee  I think that's correct. We do work with stakeholders. If there are pieces missing from their application, we might go back and seek clarification on things. We might work with them and say, “This element might not be eligible, but these aspects are.” We do work with our program applicants to address the concerns in their applications.

Agriculture committee  I think the first part of moving forward on a results focus is to make clear what we're trying to achieve. It's to establish broad objectives, but to also allow more specific priorities. In the Growing Forward 2 framework and then in the next policy framework, we are undertaking activities at the federal level, and the provinces are undertaking activities at the provincial level.

Agriculture committee  That's a very good question. As you start to look through the past several frameworks, you see that certain elements are similar, such as innovation, markets, and trade. Those are key elements of success for the sector. As we move on, we change our emphasis based on our analysis of the state of the sector.

Agriculture committee  I think measuring the impact of innovation is a real challenge, because innovation happens over such long period of time. It almost happens in a matter of decades. It is hard to track the investments we made in Going Forward 2 directly to the impacts we're seeing. That said, we've been doing innovation work and science work for a long time and we are starting to see the impacts.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. That's actually a key element of the discussions we're having with provinces right now. As I mentioned earlier, at Agriculture Canada we are investing significant amounts in innovation. The provinces are as well. We're looking at how we can better share information among different levels of government to ensure that we are coordinating, that we're not duplicating efforts, and that we have maximum impact, because we have limited funding.

Agriculture committee  We're not able to answer that question at this time.