Agriculture committee  As chairman of CAAR, I own and operate an agri-retail facility in British Columbia. One of the concerns that we have, as retailers, is that we see this increasing regulatory burden coming at us. Given the lean margins and the extremely difficult year we had, these kinds of securi

Agriculture committee  That's our concern.

Agriculture committee  If I can add to that, this process has been a three-year process where we've been trying to get government support for this initiative on security. We basically had the support of this committee in June 2008, the support of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture, but we act

Agriculture committee  What is in the protocol we think meets or exceeds the regulatory burden that's in front of us right now. The concern is that we want to make sure, in the event that there is an incident in which, for instance, ammonium nitrate fertilizer is stolen and used for some kind of nefari

Agriculture committee  It may be worth noting that we all believe, I think, and our membership believes, that our situation related to these products is highly unique in the country. There's probably no other sector in Canada that sells on a retail basis products such as ammonium nitrate fertilizer. We

Agriculture committee  Well, nitrate-based fertilizers at this point.

Agriculture committee  It's a list of what expenses should be eligible.

Agriculture committee  There's none. These would be typical operational costs or capital costs that you capitalize when you get your typical writedown.

Agriculture committee  I don't think we have any knowledge that CN closing rail lines is directly impacting our members. My personal business is on a CP branch line that runs between Sicamous, British Columbia, and Vernon. It was owned by CP but operated by a private company, OmniTRACS. That line was s

Agriculture committee  On what we're seeing in terms of the acquisition and reduction in independent retailers in the market, the acquisitions are being conducted by publicly listed corporations. Agrium Inc. is listed on the TSE and the New York Stock Exchange. Viterra Inc. is another publicly listed c

Agriculture committee  Certainly Monsanto is a big player in seed. We buy and sell Monsanto seed. To be honest, they're actually a pretty good company to deal with.

Agriculture committee  Certainly, from the fertilizer perspective in particular, there has been a lot of consolidation over the years. This is a family business. I haven't been involved for that long, but in the 10 or 15 years I have been involved, the number of potential companies we can buy from has

Agriculture committee  Our organization does not have a formal position on that. I have personally been contacted by the Competition Bureau a number of times on different merger-related issues. In fact, I've even been contacted by a similar organization in the United States, looking at the potential Ag

Agriculture committee  I don't mean to contradict David, but you hear a lot of talk within the industry, and I did hear that the Competition Bureau was looking at one of the major takeovers in Alberta. That's just street talk.

Agriculture committee  Concerning agricultural chemicals and PMRA, our issues are exactly the same as the issues Jennifer is discussing. We have a great deal of frustration with PMRA in terms of approving agricultural chemicals. I don't think we would agree there should be a world body, but certainly w