Agriculture committee  Sure. I was going to toss in a little bit of sunshine amongst all the doom and gloom, because despite what you may see in the Twitterverse, the number of nations that are planting biotech crops continues to rise every year. The number of acres being planted continues to rise. Th

Agriculture committee  I would say that in the short term—and Dr. Yarrow can certainly have more to say about this—the concern is low-level presence. What we need globally is an agreement on low-level presence so that at least shipments that are containing trace amounts aren't being turned back, and

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. We appreciate your invitation to be here today. As I say, with me is Dr. Stephen Yarrow, our vice-president of biotechnology. Dr. Yarrow is here to answer all the difficult questions. CropLife Canada is the trade association representing the manufacturers

Agriculture committee  I'm not going to touch the supply management question with a barge pole, with the greatest of respect. We have lots of problems; I'll leave that one for others. I can talk about the text, though. The section on the biotechnology working group—it is what it is, to borrow an expre

Agriculture committee  My friends at the Grain Growers of Canada will probably be in a lot better position to answer that than I would. My understanding, in speaking to them, is that they feel that the growth in the European market will be more gradual. It won't be an instant ramping up of demand from

Agriculture committee  Yes, and I would certainly categorize that as a nice problem for Canadian agriculture to have.

Agriculture committee  Oh, we have those discussions internally quite regularly. As I say, if I were to try to make sense of attitudes on that, we'd be here for an awfully long time.

Agriculture committee  I think you're probably on to something there. I don't think we're going to shift that overnight. Our goal here is for opportunities for Canadian farmers to grow exports and products that Europeans want, and eliminating technical barriers to moving those products over. I think t

Agriculture committee  What's most impressive about CETA is the fact that virtually all tariffs are being removed. In fact, they're being removed at a faster rate and a more aggressive pace than they were in the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. That's particularly noteworthy. In our sector, there are

Agriculture committee  We've certainly seen farm gate income continue to rise. I believe it has risen for the last three consecutive years. Farm gate income continues to rise. Obviously we have no crystal ball to see what commodity prices will be, but we do know that there is a continued demand for foo

Agriculture committee  Innovation is my colleague Dr. Yarrow's territory.

Agriculture committee  That's the plan.

Agriculture committee  That's extremely true. That was going to be an issue, regardless. In fact, I should clarify my opening statement in that CETA at least provides an avenue and a structure to talk about these issues, so it's a net plus. Those issues that I discussed, which we have raised with int

Agriculture committee  That would be extremely beneficial for us. We always have the mantra of rules-based trade. What is rules-based trade? Agreements like this are rules-based trade. That's why we welcome it and it's why we would welcome the Trans-Pacific Partnership as well.

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely, that's our assessment as well.