Agriculture committee  It's a very good question. The challenge here is that both levels of government have spent a good deal of time in the last century-plus putting in a lot of public infrastructure to support agriculture research and food research, for the very good reason that it benefited society.

Agriculture committee  For the first part, I don't think mandates will work. The State of Illinois will try, but I suspect they'll find that over time they don't work to this extent, and just because they don't get challenged doesn't make it right. It just may be that it's not worth the effort to chall

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  If I can, Mr. Chairman, that's a good question. I'll say three things. I would like to know at what time any government, any minister of agriculture, ever said local food was not important, because it always has been. What has always been the challenge for many institutions as t

Agriculture committee  Thank you, David. Thank you for the question, Mr. Lemieux. Our view is that it's an enterprise prospect, with willing sellers and willing buyers, not coerced or compelled by legislation or regulation but trying to find mutual benefit. There is mutual benefit, but sometimes it'

Agriculture committee  My viewpoint, and the viewpoint of the centre, is that we don't think that such competition should be regulated beyond the existing Competition Bureau capacity. We see that the marketplace can work so that some competitors are doing well and will continue to do well. If they shar

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Zimmer. I think I'll posit two different questions, challenges, to the government, both the federal government and the provinces. One is a challenge of scale. To satisfy the market demands of a large retailer, a large food service—Tim Hortons, Bos

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. For example, if we have historically grown certain types of vegetables, with a regulated marketing system to help protect the producers in their negotiations with processors, retailers, then bringing in new crops, which they're not used to producing,

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the question. On what Canadian consumers may want from their products, it's not just the taste but the packaging, long shelf life, the ability to have it at a price that is competitive to other importers, or in some cases to have it in the shape and form they want

Agriculture committee  Yes, but the challenge on the value chain is this. Do people truly understand what consumers really want? We've done analysis where we've talked to consumers; colleagues went to talk to consumers as they entered the grocery store. They indicated what they would buy as they entere

Agriculture committee  That's fine, thank you.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for a chance to present on Canada's food chain. I'll make a very quick comment on the George Morris Centre, for everyone's awareness, talk about the food chain very quickly and some of the challenges and opportunitie

Agriculture committee  On the question of subsidies and the impact on domestic markets, the Government of Canada has the capacity to look at—and has done so at the request of the farm community—how product coming into Canada is dumping and countervailable, as well as to take action, to be supportive, a

Agriculture committee  We shouldn't assume that the farm community across Canada is way behind the Stone Age. Every sector has gone through the same challenges. An acceptable style of business management had to increase, improve, and become more sophisticated. There are a number of farmers across Canad

Agriculture committee  This has been a problem for decades. Part of my life was doing federal-provincial programming in income support, and we never asked some of those questions. How did this really change that farm family or that farm sector? How did this really affect the food processing sector? Did