Agriculture committee  The knowledge will be there in some cases. I happen to live down near Tillsonburg, so I live in that part of the country, but probably more sweet potatoes are grown. There are a fair number of sugar beets grown in Lambton County. They're shipped across the border right now for producing sugar at the refinery in Michigan.

Agriculture committee  Yes, if I look at the biomass, there are two things. One is utilizing biomass from existing crops. In corn, you can start switching to the stover rather than the grain for producing biofuels. There's still some research that's going on there, but eventually we will see that shift to using that component of the crop that isn't used today.

Agriculture committee  Patents and trademarks are critical. Obviously any companies that are going to go commercial on our side have those and look after them. Defending them in the U.S. is not a problem. Most of them file in the U.S. first anyway, simply because the process is quicker if you get your filing done there and then file in Canada and wherever else in the world you want protection.

Agriculture committee  I agree, and I think the private investment will be there. If you look at somebody like BioAmber, their facility is $80 million to $90 million. The rest of that funding will come from them. The money they have from the government is loans. It's not grant money. The problem is that most of these start-up companies, when you look at their bond ratings, are rated triple-B or less.

Agriculture committee  Well, I think a lot of it is.... The flow-through share is one concept that we use a lot. I have been on the board of BIOTECanada, and we've always positioned that as something that would be good to have on the life science side beyond the oil and gas sector. If you look at the success it's created on that side, we feel it could benefit this side as well.

Agriculture committee  Yes. All of these things are very important as we look at how we develop these alternative fuel uses, biodiesel being one of those and Sarnia being one location. But the benefit of Sarnia is because it is a petroleum-based community. I always have to remind people, particularly when I'm south of the border, that the first place oil was discovered in North America was out in Oil City in Petrolia, outside of Sarnia, and not down in Pennsylvania.

Agriculture committee  On the biomass side?

Agriculture committee  It depends on which crops you're looking at. In western Canada we've done a significant amount of work with triticale, I'd say, over the last five or eight years. There's probably been $20 million or $30 million in research there. It was a program that was funded through one of the ADF programs, with Growing Forward 2, and then the provinces also financed that one, and some of the camelina and some of the other oilseed crops.

Agriculture committee  Yes, the provinces are certainly participating. When you start looking at biomass, it draws in the forestry side as well. We aren't talking about that at this meeting, but there's a lot of effort on the forestry side as well, to look at the utilization of biomass in those sectors through FPInnovations and other organizations.

Agriculture committee  That's a very good question. It's an area that we're starting to do a little bit on.... I think the biomass has to be properly managed as well, but to build the awareness around it. As we look at that sector from our perspective in Sarnia, with Sarnia being a large agricultural community as well, we have the ability to reach out for straw and corn stover in the region, but also to grow some alternative crops.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for inviting me. I apologize for not having a formal, written program. I've been travelling for the last couple of weeks. It's always a pleasure to come in and speak. I have this in PowerPoint form. I've spent over 30 years in the agricultural industry, the first 15 years with the industry in research and development and marketing.