Agriculture committee  We're excited about the future of Canadian agriculture and we think our members are as well. I answered the question from Mr. Lemieux earlier talking about the growth in canola. One of the things I didn't get a chance to touch on is how many more research facilities have come u

Agriculture committee  I could open it and just say we understand, and our members clearly understand, the difficulties just in speaking about biotechnology towards trade with the EU on biotech issues. It's difficult. Our expectations were extremely modest. There is a working group and there is the sci

Agriculture committee  I know the grower groups are all doing that already. They log an awful lot of time on airplanes and spend an awful lot of time in Asia, in Europe, selling their products and telling their stories. We're also mindful of the fact that there is a market access team at Agriculture

Agriculture committee  Just to add to that in terms of what's currently happened, canola yields are up about 20% in the last 10 years. That's a hard real number: canola yields are up 20%. That's tremendously significant and modern agriculture is what's driven that.

Agriculture committee  I'll let Dr. Yarrow speak to the low-level presence issue. He knows it far better than I. It was interesting. I was just speaking right before the meeting, in fact, with your colleague Mr. Allen. Nowhere are we trying to change European attitudes on biotech or trying to sell the

Agriculture committee  How do we make it work? There are two separate issues here. There's the emotional debate about GM and non-GM and then there's simply facilitating trade. In our view, the biotech working group is about removing those irritants and facilitating trade. I know Stephen can probably d

Agriculture committee  Thank you Mr. Chair. We greatly appreciate your invitation to be here. Given that there's another group that is not here, we will try to keep you entertained for as long as we reasonably can. My name is Dennis Prouse. I'm vice-president of government affairs. Seated with me is

Agriculture committee  Mr. Hoback, I can answer that as an arts graduate sitting beside a gentleman with his Ph.D. Absolutely not. In fact, let's look at the situation in Europe, where I believe there is now 37 years' worth of backlog of products. These are products that have received their safety appr

Agriculture committee  I think Stephen touched on it. We believe that Canada, by and large, has it right now. We have it right because we have science-based regulation. We are working on and talking about rules-based trade. That's the right environment. That's why you're seeing growth in this industry.

Agriculture committee  I know. I was just going to say that there are two discussions here. There's the health and safety of the crops, and of course we're quite happy to have that discussion, as you know. Then there's the discussion about trying to create trade rules. Creating trade rules is a fairl

Agriculture committee  I think you're now seeing companies investing about 11% of their profits right back into research and development. That's a number you see in Canada. That's a number you'll see globally. There's a huge premium now placed on innovation. We want that innovation to take place in Ca

Agriculture committee  Mr. Zimmer, someone had to lead on LLP, and we're quite pleased that Canada is doing so. There is a large coalition of the willing, if you will, among major agricultural exporters, who very much want this policy. But the question was, who was going to lead? My running joke is tha

Agriculture committee  Mr. Anderson, our five-year goal would be smoothing out red tape. Mr. Storseth alluded to that earlier. There would be a regulatory system that continues to encourage innovation through better timeliness of approvals, service standards, predictability, sharing of data and approva

Agriculture committee  If we talk about the industry in general, canola is our favourite success story. The canola industry is now a $14-billion-a-year industry. It's a very uniquely Canadian success story. Let's be clear, without a foundation of science-based regulation and clear rules, the Canadian

Agriculture committee  The three largest clusters of innovation, and Peter can correct me if there are others, are obviously soybean, soy, and corn. Those would be the three where you've seen the largest amounts of innovation and tremendous increase in yields that are benefiting farmers and benefiting