Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the invitation. The George Morris Centre is a national, non-profit agriculture and food policy think tank. We're in our twenty-first year of operation. We're located in Guelph, and we have a national mandate, as I said. We provide economic

Agriculture committee  It's interesting working, as the centre does, with some larger processors and large farm producers. As to the comments Ted made about the bias against small, they feel it's a bias against large. Their challenges are that they're trying to reach the marketplace by investing in tec

Agriculture committee  I'll start by saying that I don't agree with the supposition that the demise of the mandatory Wheat Board will be the end of grain production. It will mean changes, and not everybody will be happy, but what the western Canadian farmers have done with canola and pulses is an examp

Agriculture committee  First, let's look at the small number of farmers in this country who are producing most of the food. It's a fragile number and they're not producing it on a whim and a whistle and a theme of just wanting to go out in the morning and do a few things. They have to produce it using

Agriculture committee  It's a challenge for all of the ministers of agriculture. But given the fixed amount of money available that taxpayers and citizens are willing to provide, and realizing that it won't be an easy discussion but that it will take place over time, our proposal would be to reallocate

Agriculture committee  Unfortunately, it's the competition--Brazil, the United States, and other countries--doing as well or better in the marketplace. It's also partially the value of the dollar, as well as the ability to have enough supply in the marketplace at a time when we want it. For some commod

Agriculture committee  This has been a problem for decades. Part of my life was doing federal-provincial programming in income support, and we never asked some of those questions. How did this really change that farm family or that farm sector? How did this really affect the food processing sector? Did

Agriculture committee  We shouldn't assume that the farm community across Canada is way behind the Stone Age. Every sector has gone through the same challenges. An acceptable style of business management had to increase, improve, and become more sophisticated. There are a number of farmers across Canad

Agriculture committee  On the question of subsidies and the impact on domestic markets, the Government of Canada has the capacity to look at—and has done so at the request of the farm community—how product coming into Canada is dumping and countervailable, as well as to take action, to be supportive, a

Agriculture committee  That's fine, thank you.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for a chance to present on Canada's food chain. I'll make a very quick comment on the George Morris Centre, for everyone's awareness, talk about the food chain very quickly and some of the challenges and opportunitie

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. On what Canadian consumers may want from their products, it's not just the taste but the packaging, long shelf life, the ability to have it at a price that is competitive to other importers, or in some cases to have it in the shape and form they want

Agriculture committee  Yes, but the challenge on the value chain is this. Do people truly understand what consumers really want? We've done analysis where we've talked to consumers; colleagues went to talk to consumers as they entered the grocery store. They indicated what they would buy as they entere

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. For example, if we have historically grown certain types of vegetables, with a regulated marketing system to help protect the producers in their negotiations with processors, retailers, then bringing in new crops, which they're not used to producing,

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Zimmer. I think I'll posit two different questions, challenges, to the government, both the federal government and the provinces. One is a challenge of scale. To satisfy the market demands of a large retailer, a large food service—Tim Hortons, Bos