Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Lehoux. I'm going to try to be as quick as I can, as we have limited time today. Mr. Thompson from Nutrien, you mentioned that trying to reach this fertilizer emissions reduction target of 30% could have significant risks.

Agriculture committee  Thanks very much. I appreciate that. Mr. Prouse, as quickly as you can.... I only have about a minute left, because I want to split my time. On the same kind of question, what would the impact on commodities and our yields be if we were to do this 30% emissions reduction and triple the carbon tax on April 1?

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I'm going to give the rest of my time to Mr. Lehoux.

Agriculture committee  You are correct. My concern, Mr. Turnbull, would be that we could keep adding meetings on Bill C-234 and just drag that out longer. Obviously I don't believe we need to do that. I could put in my amendment, Mr. MacGregor, of a limit of two—with two more meetings on BillC-234, or three—to put a time limit on that.

Agriculture committee  I'm willing to make a little bit more of a concession here to Mr. MacGregor to get this going faster, if we can. I know the chair is very passionate about the food security study, which I think we all are. I honestly don't believe that we need a bunch more meetings on Bill C-234.

Agriculture committee  Thanks, Mr. Chair. Thanks, Mr. MacGregor, for bringing this forward. I think this is a very important issue. Many of my concerns with the motion as it reads are quite similar to those of Mr. Perron. I am not opposed to supporting a study of this nature. I guess my concerns would be on a few things.

Agriculture committee  I would say that's probably very similar to wood pellets or these things, which would probably cause me to go back on land more often and actually increase emissions and energies rather than decrease them. Is that accurate?

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Mr. Guénette, the other argument that we've had from some witnesses is that Bill C-234 is redundant because of the Liberal Bill C-8, the carbon tax rebate on farms. However, we had Finance Canada here in a previous meeting, and they're saying the average farmer gets about $800 back through the rebate.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I have one last question to either of the witnesses. When we see that farmers have paid $34 million on a fertilizer tariff and we see the fertilizer emissions reduction policy and we see that farmers are four times more likely to commit suicide than people in other sectors in Canada, what's the burden this is having on Canadian farmers?

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Mr. Guénette, you said that you had about 6,000 members who are involved in the agriculture sector. Mr. Legault, do you have an idea of how many farmers your organization represents?

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Mr. Carey, do you have an idea of how many farmers your groups would represent?

Agriculture committee  Okay. Perfect. Just to put that in context, I think the NFU has about 3,000 members, and many of those aren't farmers. I just want to put that in the context of the groups in this panel who are saying that their members are very supportive of Bill C-234. I just want to ensure that we have this in context.

Agriculture committee  One of my colleagues asked a couple of witnesses in the previous panel what other options are available, and there really wasn't an answer. There were lots of answers like “things are in the works” and “things are happening”, but that doesn't help us right now. Are there options other than propane and natural gas to heat barns, cool barns or dry grain right now?

Agriculture committee  Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'll be very quick. I have just three questions and I'll ask them at the same time and leave them open for a response, as I think our committee did a great job hitting on the main issues. First, what is the reasoning, or has Health Canada given you any responses from your communications, for why they are not willing to relinquish hemp from their jurisdiction to Agriculture Canada?

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to pick up on the questions to Ms. Menezes. I don't know if she had a chance to complete her answer. I certainly appreciate it when my Liberal colleague, Mr. Weiler, brings up the concerns with the excise tax, which the Liberal members have been identifying as a problem, since we've been discussing this since the excise tax was increased.