International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon to members of this committee. Thank you for inviting me here today to speak about the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. The TPP is a significant opportunity for the canola industry and canola growers to gain access to a growing trading

Agriculture committee  Yes. There is other duplication as well. It was subtle, but in my presentation we are going so far as to say that, on outward inspection and weighing—not just weighing, but on outward inspection and weighing—there should be a provision that an accredited third party could do the

Agriculture committee  No, I wouldn't lock it at 25%, because the Grain Commission's cost structure could change over time and all of a sudden the percentage would be out. That was simply to point out what we think is right and what is being proposed—9% versus 25%—and it was trying to compare those app

Agriculture committee  That's a good question. It is a good first step. It does start to reduce costs, and, more importantly, get rid of some duplication, because there is some serious duplication that's wasteful, quite frankly. At least this first step gets rid of that kind of excess cost. Going fo

Agriculture committee  Yes, we're analyzing it right now. We have the document and we're going through it with a fine-tooth comb. We'll be prepared to have our input and our acknowledgement of it, and probably more importantly our views on it, through that process within the 30 days. So we're not worri

Agriculture committee  I don't want any confusion. When you go back on those items that I identified as being public-good components of the CGC...we got some estimates on what those components cost. Basically it was just an adding up of what those costs were to maintain those services that are for th

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure. I'm here to talk about the Canadian Grain Commission. All those services they do provide are valuable. Many of those are for the public good of Canada, so my comments are basically about.... Yes, they are valuable. We have a world-class grain institution in Winnipeg

Agriculture committee  Yes. There's one thing that people—

Agriculture committee  The one thing that people haven't been talking about in the consultation document for the user fees is that we have not really come to grips with the possibility or probability of 1.6% inflation, let alone the catch-up. We have the catch-up plus inflation staring at us in the fac

Agriculture committee  I guess what we're looking for is a structure. We had proposed this during the consultation process leading up to this legislation, so we're disappointed that the governance issue wasn't addressed. But we are looking for a more business-oriented governance structure, appointed by

Agriculture committee  We certainly appreciate the $20 million in cost savings that are coming here, because that is significant. I think farmers are currently incurring about $38 million of CGC costs. If the $20 million savings hadn't come along, we'd be looking at overall fees of $80 million plus, ma

Agriculture committee  Yes, and directly on the public good question, Mr. Hermanson has heard us, and I noted in his comments that the consultation is coming up and they are proposing a public good component. I believe he did say something along the lines of “we will see how this pans out in the consul

Agriculture committee  The bottom line is that we need producer security, so they get paid, whether it's bonding.... That may work for some companies and it may not for others. It's very expensive. It ties up a lot of capital. Farmers pay, ultimately, the cost of that through the basis, as Humphrey poi

Agriculture committee  I guess we were always looking for the lowest-cost vehicle to provide the producer security. We could hear from several companies that bonding was very expensive and it tied up a lot of their capital, and it was costing us farmers money. In the absence of any options, we had to s

Agriculture committee  I would say we're in favour of an insurance-based model as an option.