Agriculture committee  Let me give you two examples. Guelph spent years trying to get sufficient funds to support post-harvest technology, and I don't know whether they ever managed to get it. Nobody was interested. It simply wasn't sexy enough, wasn't interesting enough. It can take a lot of technolog

Agriculture committee  In terms of both plants and animals, we literally need to be breeding for drought tolerance, for lower water needs. We can do that, if we're encouraged to do it. We also need to look at improving the practices we put in place to reduce water losses. We need to be looking, I think

Agriculture committee  The VIDO-InterVac Centre was jointly funded with large input from the federal and provincial...and the university as well. It's level three research that can actually do disease research on large animals. So we can take in cows and do level three disease research. It's really use

Agriculture committee  We are working better together as agricultural universities across the country than we ever have been in the past, and that is just growing. So that is very useful, we think. Again, the kinds of programs that you put out there to entice us to work together are the ones that are

Agriculture committee  Asking a researcher and a dean if there's enough money in the system is always.... I mean, there isn't. There never is. We always have to—

Agriculture committee  I understand. And the trend, particularly in the NSERC system of science and technology, has been going down. The changes in the NSERC system have been an issue for us for sure. Within the science and technology of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, it's been increasingly focused

Agriculture committee  It would be wonderful if we could, and I think this is the science and technology that the meteorologists and other scientists need to work on. Quite frankly, the best we can do is come up with more ways to adapt to varying climates so that we can have more crops, better practice

Agriculture committee  Canada has the ability. One of the things that was stated carefully and clearly at the conference I was at was that we could readily increase productivity and efficiency of production to meet food needs. Whether or not the food can be efficiently distributed and whether or not we

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the committee. I was in Ottawa for a meeting earlier this week that was looking at the future of animal agriculture to serve the food needs of the world and Canada, so it was a delight to be able to stay over and

Agriculture committee  I would like to say a few words on wheat as well. Certainly the major global corporations are betting on GM wheat. They are going to take over and own a lot of those. At the university we have released a new variety of durum wheat. We have released three new varieties of wheat o

Agriculture committee  Legally it's obviously the province's role to educate the students. We in the university sector certainly take that responsibility very deeply. We also understand that we are a trusted source of knowledge transfer. All of our faculty are asked to do three things in their job desc

Agriculture committee  One very simple example, as well, of a non-GMO biotech is almost any of the plants that you buy to put in your garden in the springtime. They have been developed by tissue culture, which is growing identical plants from the cells of one plant. That's biotech, but that's not GMO.

Agriculture committee  I can address it. When we are doing public sector research, we start with a bright idea. We write a proposal describing that idea. It's evaluated by a public body. Typically it is also evaluated by other scientists to see whether it's a sensible idea. Then we get the funding, or

Agriculture committee  Very briefly, the critical piece about this is that we have to ask the question and we have to ask the full question. What we have to do is evaluate exactly what you're talking about. What are the costs and benefits of both pieces? Again, research for the public good is more li

Agriculture committee  This is not my area of expertise, and I would bow to any of my other colleagues who could better answer, but what I continually hear is that although we are relatively supportive of the early stages of taking a new product and developing it, when that corporation or start-up is t