International Trade committee  I would like to add that I still have some kits for those who want them. These are folders containing information on Agri-Traçabilité Québec.

International Trade committee  I have a DVD.

International Trade committee  You are right. Agri-Traçabilité Québec is in a position to work with Canada as a whole. We can even provide services worldwide. I would insert a note of caution, however. A traceability system is not just a database. The central database could serve Canada as a whole, just like it currently serves the Quebec government, to ensure that herd health itself is monitored, regulations are complied with, and crises can be managed.

International Trade committee  I would like to add that a traceability system does not make it possible to determine whether the given product is of high quality. We know we have quality products. Inspections are carried out and, on-farm food safety programs are in place. What a traceability system makes it possible to do is to affirm that we are in control, and that we know exactly where the source of a given problem is.

International Trade committee  Here, we're talking about implementing the system. That includes developing the data base, providing assistance to all sectors in the agrifood chain in order to automate and transfer information, placing initial identifiers on all dairy cattle and beef cattle herds in Quebec, implementing four years of management and setting up a government inspection system.

International Trade committee  For Quebec?

International Trade committee  In the hog industry, in which I worked for twelve years, over 55 per cent of the annual production was exported. That amounted to over 7 million hogs a year. In Quebec, the focus is more on dairy than beef. The export of beef in Quebec represents--

International Trade committee  I can tell you that the system management costs have remained more or less the same each year, because the goal was to become automated—that is, to receive computerized information automatically by Internet or satellite. The goal is not for us to make the team twice the size it is.

International Trade committee  Yes. Thank you.

International Trade committee  That depends on how the system is set up. Would there be a different system for each province? Would Canada be separated into two or three parts? At present, we do offer Canada-wide services for other species. We have signed the first-phase agreement with the Canadian Pork Council, and this should make it possible for all Canadian pork producers to work with Agri-Traçabilité Québec.

International Trade committee  A traceability system does indeed have a cost, but that cost is negligible compared to the cost of a crisis. We often insure our houses against fire, when there may never be a fire. Yet we will have paid insurance premiums all our lives because we feel we have an obligation to protect our property.

International Trade committee  Well, I will be speaking to my own interests here. In Quebec, we decided to set up a mandatory system because the morning a health crisis erupts, we need to have all the information within an extremely short period of time. When we took the decision in Quebec to establish the current system, we didn't try to reinvent the wheel.

International Trade committee  It is true that we have two systems in Canada that are not equivalent. Discussions on this issue have been underway for several years. It would be to our advantage, in Quebec, to have the other system in the Canadian west equivalent to ours for all species. Because when a crisis occurs, we are all part of the same country, and the borders shut down for all of us.

International Trade committee  In Quebec, as I said, this is a partnership between government and industry. The Quebec Ministry of Agriculture assumes full responsibility for management of the Agri-Traçabilité Québec system. However, producers and industry must automate their information systems in order to transfer the information to us electronically.

International Trade committee  It was developed in 2001, and the first mandatory production was in the spring of 2002. This was in both the beef and dairy sectors.