Agriculture committee  Thank you, Brian. I believe what we need to do is take a look at what we've put together as the strategic plan. Once we find out how much money there is and where we can best use it, I think that becomes the key issue. So I think it's too early to get too specific right now--num

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Wayne. You know, what's really disturbing... I don't have updated numbers of where it's at, except that the trend line is upwards--and that's disturbing--of imports. The other part is that the U.S., in their discussions with their U.S. trade organization, has target

Agriculture committee  One of the answers would be a second issuance of any emergency advance payment program. We had hoped that the HILLRP would work. It hasn't worked. That would be a key aspect, and the one single thing. But secondly, and as important, is addressing AgriStability for those producers

Agriculture committee  We need to pass the bilateral free trade agreements that are in there right now, such as with Colombia. Korea's hasn't been negotiated yet, but that is a critical one. Korea is critical and the EU is very critical. The last time I was here, I mentioned that a small country like C

Agriculture committee  Colombia is one of the ones that have already been negotiated. It's not a huge market. I don't remember the exact amount, but they buy some products for which we don't have good markets. That's why it's critical that it gets approved, not only for us but for the beef sector as we

Agriculture committee  It's virtually impossible to tell. A lot of people would go to their bank or their financial institution to talk about it and they were discouraged from applying, saying, “Oh, you're not going to apply”. We have no indication of exactly how many people have applied.

Agriculture committee  I'll give you just a quick answer. On the APP repayment, there's about $312 million out in APP loans, and the HILLRP program has paid back somewhere around $30 million. So it's not a huge percentage of that at all. On your questions concerning rededicating the money that is le

Agriculture committee  I mean, look at him. Look at all the bruises.

Agriculture committee  I can certainly address the supply management issue. We understand that for the producers in the supply management system, it's very good because they are pretty much guaranteed a margin above their cost of production. But what it would mean for our industry is a reduction from

Agriculture committee  I certainly can't answer for the minister--I'd love to--but the minister did publicly state at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture meeting that he would consider putting another stay on the repayment of the emergency advance payment program. He has since sent a letter out to e

Agriculture committee  Well, I don't know the rules really clearly on that, but I believe he can only put on an act of stay for 12 months at a time. You probably know that answer better than I do, but I believe it's for only 12 months at a time.

Agriculture committee  Sure. We have to remember that the hog farm transition program was designed to deal with those who would not be eligible for the HILLRP program so that we wouldn't have a bunch of farms on the market afterwards reducing land values and property values. That was part of the reason

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you. With me are the vice-president of the Canadian Pork Council, Jean-Guy Vincent, from Quebec, and Stephen Moffett from New Brunswick. Stephen is chair of our safety nets committee, and

Agriculture committee  I'm probably not the right one to answer that.

Agriculture committee  In the rough terms of the dumping rules, we're dumping as well, because we're selling below production costs and that's what dumping is. We actually investigated the pork coming in, because we were very strongly considering launching a dumping action, but do you know what? It's h