Agriculture committee  The trade flows from the Black Sea to North Africa, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa primarily. That's who's dependent and that's who will be badly affected, so expect bread riots.

Agriculture committee  I worry that it is generational. We'll never know that until it's in retrospect, obviously. I believe that Minister Bibeau made reference to this at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture meeting earlier this week. This is the kind of event.... I guess I'll contrast it with the normal sorts of frictions we have in agricultural and agri-food supply chains that introduce variations in the range of 2% or 5%—something less than 10%.

Agriculture committee  Yes, for sure. Let's go back to 2018, which was kind of the height of the U.S. tension with China. We saw China putting retaliatory duties on a whole range of products, but they were largely commodity products. To take an extreme example, they could have put a duty on iPhones, but they didn't put a duty on iPhones. iPhones are a heavily branded product and a prestige item in China.

Agriculture committee  I was actually going to use minor use as my example, Dave. We have a lot of experience—I'm going to say decades—with this. The reality is that Canada is a relatively small market for animal health products, crop protection products and so on. To use another analogy, Australia describes its regulatory system as tough but fast.

Agriculture committee  I have no familiarity with the likelihood of this strike, but with the demand tension in the system right now, especially relating to grain, I can only guess that it would be catastrophic.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair and honourable members, I'm honoured to appear before you this afternoon and provide my insights as a researcher with the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, an independent research institute focused on agriculture and food. The COVID-19 pandemic brought important concerns regarding agri-food supply chains to light, but in fact, pressures on agri-food supply chains existed prior to this.