Agriculture committee  Members will be aware that in my minister's mandate letter he's been given the task of developing a national food policy. We see that as very aligned with the economic driver for Growing Forward 2 and the next policy framework. I would say, though, that a food policy can be muc

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. I guess I could only agree with your observations about the importance of these programs in providing a competitive base for our growers. The challenge, I think, for those kinds of investments is exactly where do governments put money? Let me give you

Agriculture committee  Yes. Particularly our insurance colleagues at the provincial level pay very close attention to yield, because it's the basis for setting premiums and making payouts. I would say that yields are going up significantly more in crops where there is some advanced technology, for exam

Agriculture committee  You've hit a very rich vein of investigation. When my colleague talked about the efforts at the provincial level to boost the profile of agriculture as an attractive career for youth, one of the things they're doing is trying to lay out just how technologically advanced and capit

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  For the sake of other committee members, the challenge being outlined is that, at the federal level, there's a certain standard to becoming a certified federally regulated slaughterhouse for, generally, red meats. Very often, provincial standards will differ from the federal stan

Agriculture committee  There's no policy or regulatory problem there. I would add that CFIA, our former portfolio partner, has a program of voluntary organic certification that would help in that kind of export circumstance.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, I could come back to the committee with a contact on organic certification.

Agriculture committee  I think I mentioned in my remarks that the governments at both the federal and provincial levels are ascribing a higher priority to food processing. There are a couple or three issues that are really quite central to that. One is that it is higher value-added, so it's capturing

Agriculture committee  I think you have the process exactly right. The multilateral agreement, which will begin to operationalize the framework, should be in place ideally in July 2017. One of the ways to avoid the gap between frameworks that was identified earlier is for governments to begin to immedi

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, this is a point we hear about from every dimension of the sector. A couple of things happen that create the challenges the member is describing. One is that in between this framework and the next, in some cases there's a gap. That gap would occur on, let's say, Apr

Agriculture committee  Yes, there are a number of innovations that my colleague on the program side has introduced, including online applications and online management of the interface with program officers and program applicants, including online payouts. The digitization of the process is proceeding.

Agriculture committee  Yes, you're right. Some of these products are provincially based. We have one program—

Agriculture committee  Yes. In one specific case, the western livestock insurance program was developed by Alberta for cattle producers, and that may be what you're referring to in the Peace. Otherwise, they were partnering with the federal government. In this case, with the agreement of the other we

Agriculture committee  Correct.