Agriculture committee  The same with beef, absolutely--everybody. The other thing that could be done that we could implement tomorrow is the same type of charge that Canadian pork pays going into the U.S. for promotion and research. If there were a will by government, they could tomorrow implement exa

Agriculture committee  It's not quite that simple, because we do have open borders. So if the regulations--whatever they are--are met, the American processor chooses to sell here, and the retailer buys here, we do not advocate closing the border, because it is important to us as well. A lot of our pack

Agriculture committee  Our total pork production--and let's leave the live pigs out of it for a minute--is 21.5 million hogs, give or take. We're at a little under two million tonnes. Of that, a little over a million tonnes are exported. Of that, 28% goes to the U.S., with the rest going to the rest of

Agriculture committee  Well, thank you. When we initially asked for the $30, which amounted to $800 million, as you're very well aware, we lobbied government and opposition members on it, but it became clear very quickly that we weren't getting any support from any members, whether opposition or gover

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Larry. I appreciate the opportunity. It was actually a train, not a plane, and it wasn't late. It's just that the schedule was very tight. I do appreciate your putting us at the end of the schedule so I could make the presentation. You do have PowerPoint sli

Agriculture committee  That's a very good question, but I am going to defer it to Stephen because he's the chair of our safety net committee and is very involved in that.

Agriculture committee  I think that's a very good question, and that's why we were very careful in how we made our ask. Number one, it's based on 2008 marketings. It's not for marketings for this year. Second, it goes directly to producers. It does not go to processors or anywhere else. It goes directl

Agriculture committee  Without a question, both our industries are having great difficulties, and most of the same factors affect both. Ours has been affected somewhat more strongly simply because of our huge export dependency. The number of jobs we put into Canada is even larger and we're much more

Agriculture committee  Certainly the importation of pork has increased somewhat from the U.S., and it's a significant import. We got in about 200,000 tonnes last year and we exported over one million tonnes of pork, so it would lower it to a certain degree. Of course, even if we reduced our production,

Agriculture committee  I'll answer part of that, and maybe I'll defer a little bit to my fellow producer from New Brunswick. On the question about how much, we really went through that in detail, and we have made an ask to the federal minister for an ad hoc payment of $30 per hog for the marketings of

Agriculture committee  It was two weeks ago tomorrow that I actually met with the minister and made the ask to him. I know last week the House was not sitting, but many of our producers have talked to members of Parliament across Canada and we are expecting some movement on it very soon.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate the opportunity. My name, actually, is quite simple. You put a “P” in front of “righteous” and you have it. I'm not saying I'm righteous. We would like to thank the committee for asking us to attend again and make a presentatio

International Trade committee  Certainly, the EU one is not a small agreement. That would be very significant. We're talking about Colombia or the CA4, or Peru, or Korea. They are maybe not huge, but they are significant markets for us for specific products. The CA4, as an example, buys a lot of fat, and not e

International Trade committee  I won't touch the COOL side. There are so many questions in that, and Dennis has covered that. Certainly, as to whom to talk to down there, I agree; if you're talking to the state reps, I think that's critical. We're taking an initiative whereby we've identified the people invol

International Trade committee  Well, there's no question we do. We believe very strongly in diversifying our markets. As Ted has said, on some of the products, the loins go one place, the hams go somewhere, the bacon and offal go somewhere else. It's really important that we have many markets. It's costly to p