Agriculture committee  On an ongoing basis as we continue looking at trade agreements with countries, we have to ensure that we continue to align. Ultimately, with the modern countries—Europe, Canada, the U.S., and others—what we need to do is harmonize our regulations. We need to harmonize our pestici

Agriculture committee  Again, I think that Canadian farmers, when they see advantages, seize the advantage, or grab onto the advantage. If there are going to be additional opportunities for organic growth going into the European market, our farmers absolutely will take that opportunity.

Agriculture committee  Today's producer will first of all analyze the potential profitability of the trade, but if our producers see potential to make additional profits by expanding their operations, they will do that very quickly. Most of our producers have the capital resilience to ramp up that prod

Agriculture committee  No. If I look at the potato sector as an example, it has seen significant decreases over the last decade. As our dollar has gone from 65¢ to 94¢ today, the processing plants have moved a lot of production from Canada to the U.S. There are opportunities for processed products to

Agriculture committee  First of all, other than one apple that's currently being produced on a very limited scale in Canada and is considered GMO, none of the fruits and vegetables that are produced in Canada are GMO, so that aligns us perfectly with trade for Europe. We're much better aligned than cor

Agriculture committee  When I talk to the average producer out there, they probably don't get as involved as we do in where government is on trade issues. In real life, I'm a potato farmer from Manitoba. Many of us have already lived through the NAFTA, and when NAFTA came in, there was a lot of conce

Agriculture committee  I think it's clearly documented that European farmers are among the most highly subsidized farmers in the world. Our assumption is that when the Government of Canada enters into a trade agreement with countries in the European Union, they're taking these subsidies into considerat

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee to speak to the Canada and European Union comprehensive economic and trade agreement and aspects of trade negotiation in general, which are of importance to Canada's horticultural sec