Agriculture committee  I'll fill in, and the rest can answer as well. If you look across the country, it's a common issue regardless of where you are. There might be some scale differences. If you get into some of the farms in western Canada, they're very large, land-based farms. In eastern Canada, in some of the supply-managed farms, there's a lot of capital investment in those farms that has to be transferred.

Agriculture committee  Just on that, as Kurt started talking about, there is an initiative where industry is trying to build a consensus on how we approach public trust issues, using the existing value chains for that. Under the APF, if that could be identified as one of the types of project funding that would be prioritized, that would be important.

Agriculture committee  That's one of the problems we talked about in the presentation: reporting on the impact of the programming. I think that's one of the things that should be looked at in growing forward 3, if you can call it that. How do we measure what we're doing, really clearly identify what the objectives are and how we measure?

Agriculture committee  I'll take a stab at it. I'd be more concerned if there were a drastic shift in interest rates. I'm from the generation that dealt with interest rates in the early 1980s. The debt itself, with the interest rates that are there, is definitely repayable. I think the risk is if there's a shift in those interest rates.

Agriculture committee  I think the role for government would be helping with the farm business management planning and making sure that farmers have the tools to do the type of evaluation that's necessary according to their own particular situation.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and committee members for the opportunity to appear before you, and present the Canadian Federation of Agriculture's perspectives on the next agriculture policy framework. As you're aware, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture represents producer groups and a number of commodity groups across the country.

Finance committee  Yes. First of all I would like to say that Bill C-661 does attempt to address that issue. We have actually consulted with some accounting firms, and I think the proposal looks like a simple way to fix the issue. Maybe I should explain a little further. Quite often farmers will develop a succession plan.

Finance committee  Yes, we support that initiative. As I mentioned, in the brief we highlighted the top four things that we support. On the agricultural marketing initiative, I think it's becoming even more critically important now with all of the discussions on opening up new markets around the world that getting a trade agreement in place is just the first step.

Finance committee  Thank you, and thanks for the invitation to attend. As mentioned, I'm the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, and we represent about 200,000 farm families across the country. I'd like to make a few comments on some of the provisions in the 2015 federal budget and Bill C-59.

Agriculture committee  There may be some restrictions on the movement of certain species. I recall a few years ago I was in the Rainy River area in northwestern Ontario. There was an elk producer there who was wanting to have his animals killed at a federally inspected facility, which was located in the Winnipeg area.

Agriculture committee  I think there are a number of players that have to be at the table: the provincial and federal governments; CFIA would definitely be playing a role; provincial inspection authorities would be playing a role; and the processors would have specific concerns that they would be bringing forward.

Agriculture committee  You've raised one of the issues that has bubbled to the surface in the last little while, namely having adequate labour in place. I don't think it's any secret that agriculture producers use a lot of labour, some of it through temporary foreign workers programs. The systems that have been in place for the agricultural sector have been in place for almost 50 or 60 years now and are working very well.

Agriculture committee  That's where I suggested that we should take it one step further from the pilot project that was done in comparing and trying to harmonize federal and provincial inspection regimens, because the food is safe regardless of which plant it comes from, and I think there's a communications piece that has to be done there.

Agriculture committee  Because of the respect for the federal system, I think even closer linkages between CFIA and the provincial regulatory agencies would be appropriate. I know that in some provinces CFIA actually does the training for the provincial inspectors. In some provinces there isn't the same type of link.

Agriculture committee  One more comment. I think we've been talking primarily about meat inspection, but I did have some contact with the dairy sector. Even in the processing side of the dairy sector, they face some different regulatory issues within provinces. Going back to what I was saying in the recommendation, I think we've really got to drill down and get a handle on the exact regulations that are causing the problems and see what the differences are and then identify where we can go from there.