Agriculture committee  Thank you. My name is Rick White. The imbalance in the commercial relationship between the railways and the other stakeholders in the grain supply chain has been fully exposed this crop year negatively affecting producers and to the ultimate detriment of our national economy an

Agriculture committee  I'll answer the question.

Agriculture committee  I can respond to that. Regarding the penalties for the order in council, we don't see that as long term. We see that as a very short term measure. What we would rather see that replaced with is contractual relationships between the shipper and the railways with reciprocal penal

Agriculture committee  For the canola industry we are very far behind. I don't have the most recent statistics regarding canola, but what we are showing right now is that by the end of the crop year, canola will still have a 3.3 million tonne carry-out even at the current rate of movement. So we are go

Agriculture committee  Well, even if we get the one million tonnes a week, when you look at the aggregate numbers, if we can maintain a one million tonne a week movement, we're still going to have a 23 million tonne carry-out overall. We'll still have a 3.3 million tonne carry-out of canola. And on the

Agriculture committee  Yes, the unintended consequence of the order in council is to create a demand push by the railways to move as much product in as short a time as they possibly can, and they're starting to bung up certain corridors, particularly the west coast ones. Even though they are pushing ha

Agriculture committee  On the service level agreements, I'll repeat that we need reciprocal penalties built into them, because these will drive accountability between the two contracting parties. That measure will help a lot. It's accountability that is missing today. Today it is based on best efforts,

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning to the members of this committee. Thank you again for inviting me here today to speak to you about Bill C-18, the agricultural growth act, and specifically the amendments that will impact farmers and the growth of our industry. The CCGA

Agriculture committee  The 10% number we use is what we experience at CCGA, the data that we have for the farmers we serve in western Canada. I suspect the minister is using the national averages, which would be a different set of numbers. But yes indeed, the number of farmers who are hitting the limit

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to testify on your study on promoting domestic trade by reducing interprovincial trade barriers. The Canadian Canola Growers Association represents 43,000 canola farmers from Ontario west to B.C. on issues that affect the profitability of

Agriculture committee  Basically, from our perspective, with a substantial crop like canola that we grow, basically we rely heavily not so much on the agrimarketing program but on open and free trade. We need those barriers down whether domestically or internationally. We need tariff and non-tariff bar

Agriculture committee  No, I don't have any dollar values. We looked at the restrictions on Ontario and the Quebec milk act, which eliminated the possibility of getting a butter-vegetable oil blend or dairy analogs into the market. Between those two markets, they represent, I believe, about 75% of the

Agriculture committee  Right, thank you. It is a very serious issue. We have the federal authorities in place that do very rigorous testing, monitoring, and assessments before any of these products are released for commercial use. Those tools, like pesticides for example, are used by farmers. That's w

Agriculture committee  Right. Well, in terms of timeline, it depends on the issue, but what we really need are clarity, certainty, and predictability through the process. One or two years should be more than sufficient to come to a decision and a binding resolution on the issue at hand. This five-year

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's an estimate from the Grain Farmers of Ontario. Should they go forward with a neonicotinoid ban in Ontario, it's going to affect corn production and certainly canola production as well. It will either be losses due to infestation of flea beetles, for example, because t