Environment committee  I'd like to chime in on this one, because I think it's really important to have a science-based regulatory system that is predictable. It doesn't matter if it's a piece of equipment or a pesticide or a new feed. We need to be able to go and get approvals in order to be able to ad

Environment committee  My experience has been that incentives will only work as long as they're consistent and they're paid forever. If you want to make fundamental change in decision-making, it has to make economic sense first.

Environment committee  I think it's greater than that, because the traditional mechanism for expanding knowledge and new technology was through word of mouth, demonstrations and extension officers who were out in the field. That has changed significantly over the last 20 or 30 years. That's not where p

Environment committee  Mike is right, in terms of the motivation behind a producer. A producer will sell and produce what is at the highest cost, so it needs to be realistic, whether it's a new crop or an existing crop specifically designed for the biofuels market. It all comes down to price. In terms

Environment committee  The answer is no, but Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada actually undertook some analysis to look at how a carbon tax of various levels would impact producers. Now, they didn't include carbon sinks and they didn't include biological processes: methane generated from cattle or nitro

Environment committee  I would say absolutely—

Environment committee  I would just say that an impact of that size...definitely some producers would feel an impact.

Environment committee  Actually, that is a good question. One of the things I did in preparation for this was to compare the results of greenhouse gas emissions for our crops versus in the rest of the world. In fact, we're as good or better. I think we have some advantages that we can't lose. One of th

Environment committee  That was the reason I pointed out the benefit of reducing nitrous oxide and focusing on that rather than the carbon sinks, because if carbon sinks...if 45% of the soils or 80% of the soils have already been converted, then it's very difficult for us to make the same type of signi

Environment committee  I can take that question. When we did our study, we included organic and conventional together. We didn't separate them out. However, I can tell you the direction where there would be some differences. As you indicated, the fertilizer manufacturing piece, the pink piece, would

Environment committee  Thank you for inviting me to speak here today. The Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Crops was formed in 2013 specifically to facilitate cross-commodity collaboration on sustainability issues facing the grains sector. For our purposes, sustainability means social responsibilit

Agriculture committee  In terms of the positive benefits of climate change, I think it all speaks to the ability of the producers to adapt. There are pros and cons to each one. For example, it can get warmer, but on the other hand, that may increase the pests, and therefore, it may require more pestici

Agriculture committee  There are no discussions. Again, it's not the kind of forum where we have those types of discussions, but we do know that the carbon life cycle report that we have conducted, which will be published in January, is a helpful measurement tool in any kind of policy discussion. That'

Agriculture committee  Just to follow up, I can't provide you at this moment with the exact numbers but it was something that has been followed by the farm environmental management survey and the agriculture census as to what kind of, I would say, technology whether it's the precision farming or GPS or

Agriculture committee  Do you want me to answer?