Environment committee  Yes, and maybe I can give you something completely different, because it excites me a little as a farmer as well. I'm very intrigued about the future of robotics and autonomous machinery, which are already out there to some degree. For example, for a sprayer—yes, we do need to

Environment committee  I'm referring to the carbon tax. My point is that we've done all this without intervention, incentives or being taxed by government to do the behaviour. This is the economics of growing crops. There's no money in emitting carbon. There's a natural economics at play there to drive

Environment committee  I don't have those numbers from 2005 at hand, but the numbers I gave earlier about our historical success were measured between 1981 and 2011. Those numbers are that, during that time, the energy used to produce canola dropped by 43% and the land use efficiency improved by 25%.

Environment committee  On the capital cost allowance, yes, that will spur innovation and investment in innovation. I can only speak from the farm level. That would be very helpful to get farmers in a place where they can afford this innovation, which turns over pretty quickly. Our success to date has

Environment committee  Yes. Maybe I could just reiterate what I mentioned in my testimony initially. We're at a 2% federal mandate for renewable content in diesel in particular, and that's why I focus on that, because it's where canola fits. We could do 5% very easily, and we could get a very signifi

Environment committee  Yes, I can take that. You know, we're careful not to advocate for one system of farming over another, right? However, 99% of canola production in western Canada is genetically modified.

Environment committee  It's 99%.

Environment committee  The issue with moving to no-till is how do you control the weeds. That was the key technology and the biological piece, when they invented genetically modified canola to be herbicide tolerant initially to Roundup and now there are several others that are being used. That fixed th

Environment committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation to speak to the committee. My name is Rick White, and I'm the CEO of the Canadian Canola Growers Association. CCGA is the national association representing the 43,000 farmers who grow canola. We are a member of the Canola Council

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. From a farmer's perspective, every farm is different; they operate differently. However, I think what they all have in common is that it's a very capital-intensive business, and that's what makes it risky. Giving farmers the option to have an acceler

Agriculture committee  During the crisis of 2013, the cash advance spiked quite substantially. We put probably an extra $300 million out the door in the last two months or so before the new program. We knew farmers were desperate at that time. This year the data doesn't show that yet—and I underscore “

Agriculture committee  We see the permanent solution as just changing the limits. We don't see that as ad hoc, because farmers have been asking for limit increases in an ongoing way regardless of the situation. Now would be a great time to do it, because it would be a much more proactive measure to tak

Agriculture committee  I was just going to give an example. Japan is our longest-standing, most important customer for canola. We meet with them formally twice a year. Every time we've met since 2013, they've brought up the reliability of delivery of their product—our canola—to them in Japan. It's a co

Agriculture committee  On the production side, definitely we can reach it. The question is whether we'll have the infrastructure to sell it and get it out of port.

Agriculture committee  Our biggest premiums in the market globally are October, November, and December shipping. That is the toughest time to ship in Canada. When we miss that sweet spot and we're now pushing shipping down into June, July, and August, we are losing premiums that we would have captured