Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Yes, I can. In my view, the situation has improved between 2004 and 2009. That's a fact. However, things are always difficult when there are staff changes. There is a lot of excellent training being done. There is the biosecurity equipment used by CFIA. But even today, in 2009, t

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Inspectors visited farms one by one, issuing the notices. If a strain of the virus is detected on one of those farms, the inspector could transmit it from one farm to another. That's not the case here; there was no transfer. We inspected both farms in question and everything was

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  It's a slightly different perspective and it depends on what is going on. I'll go back to not a listeriosis outbreak but an avian influenza outbreak. I think what was beneficial in 2004--and we came out of there and we did a post-mortem and a lessons learned--was the fact that t

Agriculture committee  I think in any market access gains, if you lose a market that you had, it's the worst thing. Missing an opportunity by not getting into a market is one thing. Losing one you had comes back. As for COOL, if pork and beef can't go where they naturally have gone, into the U.S., and

Agriculture committee  It's the same way with the cattle industry. Not all parts of the bird are preferred by Canadians. Primarily dark meat goes to the Philippines and Taiwan. In fact, we've created quite a market in the Philippines, because in western Canada we feed wheat and barley as opposed to cor

Agriculture committee  In terms of horsepower, we're at a troubling time right now, losing our chief agricultural negotiator, which is great for him—he is off and has received a promotion, and that's fantastic. That being said, from what I understand, we've had some difficulty filling the job of chief

Agriculture committee  Ministers do change.

Agriculture committee  Yes. I'd say that's the biggest challenge concerning the WTO, and I think the other one is the uncertainty about where it's going right now. We talked about an intendence going in a different direction at the WTO and about whether it is going to go strictly to agriculture. There

Agriculture committee  I think what you're seeing from the U.S. is a real concern. I'll call it addressing the elephant in the middle of the table, which is Brazil, which wants to hide behind being a developing country, not provide any access, take every single provision to get away from it; and the U.

Agriculture committee  Yes, that is a fact. We import close to 8% of our consumption. These imports are only value-added products, such as boneless and skinless chicken breasts. That amounts to approximately 15% or 16% of our market. Given the retail situation in Canada, the Americans have the capaci

Agriculture committee  No, because there is a national agency that looks after layers. These are egg producers.

Agriculture committee  No, that is a separate association. I do know that this association does have a research program for medicine.

Agriculture committee  No, that is not the same thing. With regard to research and the questions that your colleague asked earlier, we think there needs to be an increase in research going forward. The problem arises when the focus is placed on innovation alone, and not competitiveness. Competitivene

Agriculture committee  Our system has changed over time or evolved to do that. It really becomes a question of how efficient the processing and marketing are, as well as the production. If you are in a province where you have a processor that is not very aggressive and not a good marketer, it unfortuna

Agriculture committee  Yes, that is right.