Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. Do I have any more time, Chair?

Agriculture committee  I'll give it back to you.

Agriculture committee  I mean generally, but if that has an impact on groceries.... I think our main focus here is making sure Canadians have lower food prices.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for being here, and indeed it's good news to hear the pendulum's swinging and that food prices are coming down more in line with general inflation and that Bill C-56 did help. We also have Bill C-59 right now under consideration, and you mentioned that there were aspects of that bill that you thought would be very helpful in continuing to combat the concentration and issues around competition.

Agriculture committee  But they—droughts, floods and things like that—are not going to lower prices, obviously, when we're....

Agriculture committee  Has there been an occurrence of that in the last five years in Canada?

Agriculture committee  Okay. That's great. Thank you very much.

Agriculture committee  That's great. I would love to go to Stacey Taylor and ask about that question of volatility. I saw something about food prices being calmer next year. Perhaps you could comment on that and why you think that is the case.

Agriculture committee  That's good to know. Thank you.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I think I may stay with that line of questioning, because you said, Mr. Charlebois, that you cannot correlate food costs with the carbon tax. In fact, the carbon tax is higher this year than it was last year. It's been going up by a certain amount, predictably, for investments every year.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Obviously, the United States doesn't have a carbon price across the country, but we know that many of the states have an equivalent to a carbon price. We also realize that a lot of the trade agreements are going to include some kind of carbon pricing in them. You talk about competitiveness.

Agriculture committee  The speed of the change is what you're referring to—very good. Have you done any work on looking at the impact of climate events in Canada on food costs? I'm talking about anywhere in the chain, but particularly the farmers. The droughts we've had recently and the flooding, the forest fires....

Agriculture committee  It increases the volatility. You said climate change would not necessarily drive prices higher.

Agriculture committee  Excuse me, are you saying that you have done things differently than you would have done otherwise during this time?

Agriculture committee  Sorry, I don't have much time. I know the programs that you have. They were in your submission. I really appreciate it, Mr. La Flèche, but I'm just trying to understand. Are you saying that you have had greater price reductions or have tried to address the huge run-up in food costs that Canadians are facing right now?