Agriculture committee  Again, Michel, if that's okay with you, I can start on this and then you can take over where I have left off. As you've said, the processing sector has put a lot of measures in place to ensure that they can move the cattle through as quickly as possible. They've done a lot of wo

Agriculture committee  Under AgriStability the $6.5 million in losses have already been incurred, so if it goes forward, we're looking at more increases. You're right, AgriRecovery certainly is the way we need to manage this. There has not been a lot of flexibility under AgriRecovery, and we have said

Agriculture committee  Michel, I can start on this. As we've said, right now, we're already backlogged by about 130,000 cattle in western Canada. As I just mentioned, the loss that's going to cause for the cattle feeders in a best-case scenario for that 25,000 head is around $6.5 million. The set-asid

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Michel. Government support to manage agricultural risk comprises four programs. These include AgriInsurance, AgriInvest, AgriRecovery and AgriStability. Together, they provide about $1.6 billion annually to producers, but very little of that is for, or can be accesse

Agriculture committee  We're reaching peak right now, and you're talking about whether they can build more capacity. They can't even manage the capacity they have. You have to have finances to be able to support your cattle right now, let alone looking at building even more. To expand on the previous

Agriculture committee  Well, you're asking me to look into my crystal ball. I would just say that some of the changes being looked at under business risk management are things that would help provide better liquidity and resilience. Michel, I'll give you a chance to respond.

Agriculture committee  That would be correct. All the things that needed to be done to make the plant workable—they had to put partitions between people, and they had to increase space for social distancing—will slow down production. We don't know precisely, but at least in the short term, full capacit

Agriculture committee  There wasn't a backup. I mean, everything—

Agriculture committee  Well, that's not true. I'm not sure if Michel can answer, but there certainly was some production backup in the eastern part of the country. Michel, are you able to answer that question?

Agriculture committee  That's an average, yes.

Agriculture committee  I don't have an exact amount, but I can tell you that some of my members have told me that they've actually hit losses closer to $800. This is a loss that they've never seen before, even in times of BSE. These are pretty phenomenal losses. Again, Michel, maybe you can back me u

Agriculture committee  I'll take this, Michel. It's very hard to say exactly how long this will last, because the situation is adapting and changing. In terms of the program we put together, I think we're now in what I would consider a worst-case scenario, with less than 50% production occurring. It's

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, and I apologize for the problems. Maybe I'll just take over where Michel left off and talk a little bit about the challenges of COVID-19 that have hit the beef industry. There has been a dramatic reduction in beef processing capacity in both Canada and the

International Trade committee  Trade in beef and live cattle between the U.S. and Canada has created a highly integrated North American market that benefits the beef sector on both sides of the border. For all practical purposes, Canadian and U.S. beef industries operate within a single North American market w

International Trade committee  My name is Janice Tranberg, and I'm the president and CEO of the National Cattle Feeders' Association. I've worked in the agriculture industry now for over 20 years, and I've worked in areas from industry to government and now the cattle-feeding sector.