Agriculture committee  This is one of the venues where we put the idea out to see if there's traction on the idea and if people are interested in it.

Agriculture committee  I'm just throwing this out right now. It is something that came out in the spring; we're bouncing it around with people, and hopefully the federal government will say maybe there's some merit to it. This is our first venue; we're floating the idea out.

Agriculture committee  In Manitoba we have a weanling industry that sells 4 million weanlings into the U.S. to feeder operations. This whole system is like a just-in-time delivery system. Trade disputes, trade actions, and so on are very disruptive. Our basic problem is if we can't ship pigs, after thr

Agriculture committee  There is no question that the demand on feed grains in the United States is going to pull up the demand for feed grains from Canada. They are ratcheted together. What we're saying here is let's not exacerbate that in terms of Canadian or provincial government policies and so for

Agriculture committee  In ten minutes, I'm trying to cover a whole host of topics here. I apologize. What I'm saying is we're prepared to pay competitive prices for grains. That's been an argument made in the press, for example, that we don't want to pay the right price for grain. That's not right. W

Agriculture committee  No. There are about seven or eight different policy tools you can use in government. The expenditure of funds in terms of doing something to achieve a public policy good is a useful tool. There are other means. Education, for example, is a critical tool as well. When we brought i

Agriculture committee  My remarks were based essentially on the biofuels that are extracted from things like corn and cereal grains. We have no problems with the meal that comes from oilseeds like canola. In fact, right now we use canola meal in the ration.

Agriculture committee  We have producers who have individual contracts with Maple Leaf Foods, and others have contracts with the Morrell company in Sioux Falls, for example. So it's an open market. My understanding is that Maple Leaf is trying to sign up producers in Saskatchewan to ensure that they h

Agriculture committee  I'm somewhat familiar with the situation in Quebec. You essentially have a marketing board that sells the finished animals to companies like Olymel. They will also occasionally sell to Maple Leaf or Quality Meat in Ontario. In Manitoba it's a little different because producers a

Agriculture committee  The situation in Manitoba is essentially that one large processing company is, shall we say, consolidating its operations.They're expanding their new plant in Brandon, and the intent is to get to a double shift so they can process 4.5 million, 5 million pigs a year. They're closi

Agriculture committee  I apologize for not having any notes. Essentially I'm going to work through some messages that the Canadian Pork Council has already provided to you, and put some of it into a Manitoba context. I'm the general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council. We have 1,400 members and a man