Agriculture committee  Okay, thanks. It's not to comment on this one, but actually on the GMO question. There are two ways you can test for GMOs. You can test for the DNA or you can test for the protein that the DNA actually produces. I just want to comment on banning or labelling. Part of the reason

Agriculture committee  It's actually before interest and depreciation that the small farmers are losing money, and this is as a class. On average they tend to lose money year after year after year. If you look at aggregate farm income statistics, you will see that on average Canadian farmers lose mon

Agriculture committee  Well it's net income, but it's actually before interest and depreciation, so net income would be even less.

Agriculture committee  Yes. I think the government can play a facilitating role in doing that, in helping bring those players together and in also helping to have a discussion around what the relationship is between the strategy and the Growing Forward framework, and which pieces would really support

Agriculture committee  First of all, there's a national food policy, but there's also a national food strategy. To me, the food strategy is the industry strategy for how we're going to be successful in the future, and the policy is the Growing Forward framework that actually can support that.

Agriculture committee  In regard to the strategy, there are a number of initiatives. The Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute has one; the Federation of Agriculture has one: and now the Conference Board of Canada is starting into this space. The common themes you see in a national food strategy are that

Agriculture committee  There has to be one strategy.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for inviting me. I do have a presentation, copies of which will be circulated later. I didn't have time to have it translated. We look at competitiveness from a business school perspective. I also farmed for 20 years, so I also look at it from that perspect