Agriculture committee  I'd like to put in a word here. The nature of the consultation, the nature of the public, is that people come forward with their concerns, not necessarily with their bouquets. If the conversation is negative, it masks the fact that people with a general level of satisfaction probably didn't come forward to talk to us.

Agriculture committee  Yes. With regard to dispute resolution, a number of specific cases were presented to us where there was no opportunity for stakeholders to have a hearing on the implementation of policy with the Grain Commission in any type of fashion to have their concerns addressed, without having to leapfrog right to the very costly process of taking them to court.

Agriculture committee  To follow on that, essentially on the question about KVD, to be very clear, the key grading issues relate to wheat and to KVD. The other concerns and comments that we heard would be a drop in the bucket compared to those particular issues. That's really where some of the malcontent rests, with regard to that and the pressures that you very well identified between competing interests.

Agriculture committee  And they're politically appointed. Again, there was no job description we could actually compare to what the expectations were. It was very broad and very general. Essentially, they're political appointees. We felt very strongly that without having benchmarks, check marks, accountability to the organization....

Agriculture committee  Before your next question, I would add that one of the other things we were striving to do was to improve the overall credibility and perception of the organization while maintaining the key fundamental protections for producers. A very easy criticism from non-producer stakeholders about decisions the Grain Commission has made is that it was acting in a biased way in favour of producers and that it was unfair.

Agriculture committee  Conrad, let met add, just to be very clear on the distinction between the commissioners, who are the executive head of the organization, that there are three of them, one identified as the chief commissioner, one as the assistant chief, and one who is called an ordinary commissioner.

Agriculture committee  If I could, I'll perhaps answer some of your questions directly. But first, with regard to biofuels, we could probably have a whole afternoon in discussion on the policy requirements and the timing and the reaction from the marketplace in terms of meeting the commitments that Canada has put forward for four years' time for standards for renewable fuels and transport fuels.

Agriculture committee  Yes. I will answer the question more directly as it relates to how many agricultural producers, although I don't have the numbers in total in terms of the attendees at the forums. One thing that's very important to note is that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was responsible for the advertising that was done for the public forums, not COMPAS.

Agriculture committee  Yes. Thanks, Conrad. On the other elements of the mandate, some things were prescribed, such as generating a discussion paper, which we issued on a public basis nationally. There were also eight public forums that were prescribed, so we held public forums in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

Agriculture committee  As Conrad stated, I think the most effective use of time is to allow members to ask us questions, and then we can provide answers.