Agriculture committee  That's a good point. I'll highlight that. It's a result of partnership, of the value chain, and a goal of 15 million tonnes by 2015 to coordinate growing more canola and crushing more canola at the same time. Those products.... One of the market development issues is probably the bigger issue of getting rid of the canola meal.

Agriculture committee  Thanks, Randy, for putting me on the spot. Certainly there was a huge impact on the Canadian canola growers, partly because the market was just emerging in China. Demand was starting to really ramp up in China, and with the 15-million-tonne Canola Council goal, this was the way we were going to achieve it.

Agriculture committee  It's absolutely critical. To highlight what we just talked about—that China and the U.S. are huge markets for us, and we're export-dependent—we need to have more people to whom we're exporting so that we're not dependent on one market alone. That's the main thing: we need market access to all of these countries, so that if someone has a problem or a hiccup the industry is not shut down because we're only in one door.

Agriculture committee  Right.

Agriculture committee  That's a difficult question. There are always a lot of fronts to go after. I'm going to speak about what has maybe been more successful. I think market development—developing the healthy aspects of canola oil—is what's given us the market advantage in the world. Because health is very important to everybody and certainly is a buzzword, I'm a bit of a believer in promoting the healthy aspects and finding out what other good things canola oil can do for you.

Agriculture committee  We have a levy, a voluntary check-off that is submitted to the grower groups. On top of that, the Canola Council—which is different from the group I'm with—has check-offs and levies that they collect from the industry: the crushers, the exporters, and the seed companies.

Agriculture committee  It was over 12 months. It's hard to believe, and I try not to think about it, but my fertilizer price this fall was up 50% from last fall on nitrogen. That's the largest input we have on the farm.

Agriculture committee  That's fertilizer.... In my yard, I guess.

Agriculture committee  That's a good question. I believe bilateral trade agreements with other countries have negotiated that in there somehow. It's being proactive. It's talking to other countries, and I think that's what we need to do. We need to talk to them. We need to explain the product and ask them that question.

Agriculture committee  I'll comment on the science cluster, the Canola Council with the science cluster. I'm a full believer in partnerships with the value chain. I think that's one of the big gains there. I mean, the multiplication of the research dollars from the government and producer levies and crushing industry levies and seeing grower levies combined has really multiplied that out into market development.

Agriculture committee  A guaranteed canola price would be good. Seriously, this may sound a little strange, but one of the things that I think the canola industry is facing is competitiveness in some of the other grains we're growing. In my area it's very similar to your area, in Dawson Creek, in the sense that it's canola and wheat.

Agriculture committee  Obviously most people know the world is growing and we need to increase food production. There are lots of things that will help scientists. It's going to take science to increase the food production enough to feed the world. When we hit nine billion people I think it's twice as much food production as we're producing today in the world.

Agriculture committee  We're highly dependent, obviously, on the export market with exporting a large amount of oil and seed. We are dependent on that export. With 80% of it being an export of some sort of product, yes, we are dependent on some kind of export.

Agriculture committee  Obviously the big market in expansion is the Asian market, China and India, because of the population explosion there. Someone said today at a presentation that it's easy to get markets; it's harder to keep them. I think that's one of the key things of market access: the ability to keep the market open for the future.

Agriculture committee  I think it is common regulations, a regulatory system that can be recognized across borders more easily. Low-level presence policy is part of that. And non-tariff—breaking down communication. Sometimes it's just a matter of countries learning about your product. They've got some old thing on the books that's got some tariff.