Agriculture committee  The provinces implement the programs. Program implementation and funding are the subject of federal-provincial negotiations, during which, provinces have an opportunity to adjust priorities and a say in managing the program in the best way they see fit.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to thank the member for the question. Before negotiating the renewed framework with the provinces and territories, we held nationwide consultations with producers and stakeholders to gain a clear understanding of their priorities. The lion's share of our environment and climate change programs are implemented by the provinces.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for your question. Yes, we do have a group that performs economic assessments of trends and opportunities in the agricultural sector. From time to time, we do evaluate the impact of certain policies on the sector. Something else we do in connection with that is work towards better co-operation with the provinces and territories when it comes to sharing data on program effectiveness.

Agriculture committee  I might just add briefly, from a policy standpoint, that emissions from the agricultural industry are fairly significant and contribute to the national total roughly 10%, I believe. Many of them are biological in nature. They don't lend themselves to being addressed by regulatory methods, for the most part.

Agriculture committee  I'll add that from a programmatic perspective, we take some of the things we learn from our science and try to operationalize them in individual producers' farms, and through our cost-shared programming with provinces, we'll support the development of what are called “environmental farm plans” whereby an assessment will be made of where there are opportunities to improve the environmental performance of a farm.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I'm not specifically aware of the document. I'm familiar, I think, with the analysis in the document itself, but certainly we do have information in the public domain on our work in this area that we'd be happy to supply the committee with. Not being exactly familiar with the document the member is referring to, I can't specifically answer the question, but, yes, we can certainly provide some information on our work in that area.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I'll make a couple of comments. The member is quite right. I believe he indicated that the memo in question dated from January. It is true that we've done some analysis in this area. It was done before the pan-Canadian framework was negotiated and, therefore, didn't incorporate some of the features of the framework, such as the exemption for on-farm fuel use, which is part of the emissions pricing system in British Columbia and in the federal legislation.

Agriculture committee  Certainly information related to this analysis is in the public domain. There have been some efforts to update and refine it. I believe as well that my colleagues in Environment and Climate Change Canada have done some analysis in this domain that reached similar general conclusions, although it was a different methodology and specifics.

Agriculture committee  No. I think my colleague is in a better position to answer that question.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I'm going to try to answer, but Mr. Gray may have something to add. It is true that with the current framework, we made some important investments in the environment, but we think that thanks to better knowledge, it will be possible to better target the investments we make and to make progress in reducing greenhouse gases.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to add that through our risk management program, there are tools in place that can help farmers manage the risks involved when extreme weather events occur. We already have a framework in place to help producers manage those risks. Last July, the department decided to renew those programs, and to also review their functioning, in order to determine if changes were needed.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. Indeed, in our review we want to examine some quite fundamental questions, such as the nature of the risks and their evolution. We are at the very beginning of these analyses. One of the questions we will be studying is the options producers have to manage risks.

Agriculture committee  Certainly as a department, we have a history of supporting innovation in the bioeconomy space with respect to agriculture. I think I mentioned in my opening remarks that budget 2017 made an investment of $200 million to support exactly those kinds of opportunities, clean technology in the natural resources sector writ large, including agriculture.

Agriculture committee  We as a department, in partnership with a number of other departments, led by colleagues at ISED and Natural Resources, have established a clean technology hub. The idea is to have a single point of contact, where project proponents can go to talk about the full suite of federal supports.

Agriculture committee  I am going to try to answer your question. My colleague may want to add something. Yes, that is one of the six priorities in the new Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. We are already working hard on this, without waiting for April 1, 2018. We believe we can better target our resources in our negotiations with the provinces and territories, and that we can better use existing resources to advance environmental objectives.