Agriculture committee  Again, from my perspective, I was looking at where the agriculture would be represented. I think there should be equal representation from civil society, and I'm not going to pretend to figure out how that selection should be done.

Agriculture committee  I would very much disagree that environment and sustainability are not part of agriculture, because they very much are.

Agriculture committee  I think my key point is to not set deadlines and say we are going to have a national food policy by January 15 or whatever the day is, because these are incredibly complex questions and they're incredibly complex national policies. To me, it is more important to get the structure

Agriculture committee  Yes. It gets back to that point of governance and for all parts of agriculture and civil society. I think we need to have that dialogue and something like an adequately representative food council would allow for that dialogue. Something that would be of benefit as well would be

Agriculture committee  Yes, I would like to add something. The reason that we have focused almost exclusively in our initial comments on governance is because of how important it is. If the governance is not right, it doesn't matter what other policies we talk about, it will fail. If Canadians and ag

Agriculture committee  This isn't something Cereals Canada has taken on, but I know it's something that some of my members have significant concerns about. Again, it gets back to ensuring that we're basing our decisions, especially by our regulatory agencies, on science and not what's on the Internet.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Members of the committee, it's very good to be before you again. My name is Cam Dahl and I'm the president of Cereals Canada. Just to briefly touch on who Cereals Canada is, we are a value chain organization. We bring together farmers, crop deve

Transport committee  This is something that will be subject, of course, to contractual negotiations between shippers and carriers. Yes, I do anticipate that they will be robust enough.

Transport committee  I'm a former commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission so I'm somewhat familiar with producer cars. Producer cars are actually a right that is enshrined in the Canada Grain Act and have existed since 1918, I think. Don't quote me on that date. The right for producers to load

Transport committee  The reason that the technical amendments have been brought forward is to help ensure we meet the intent of the bill in terms of improved service, accountability, and transparency. If we don't see some of those improvements, the ability to meet that intent won't be as high. This w

Transport committee  That's a complicated question. It depends when you ask. From a grain perspective, if you ask that question in the middle of July, the answer is no. If you ask that question in the middle of November, the answer is yes, because there are peak demands in international markets, as

Transport committee  I don't see that, but what I do see in particular with the grain industry is a sector that's absolutely captive to rail. There's no way we're going to move 20 million tonnes of wheat by truck to Vancouver. If there is a crisis and you're a rail company and you have a choice betwe

Transport committee  I would just concur. This is, of course, not one of the primary issues for the grain shippers, but I don't see the reasoning for the exclusions also.

Transport committee  Yes. The terms “adequate” and “suitable” have been part of transportation law and jurisprudence for a long time. That, in fact, is the minium standard that the railways have to meet. That's the reason why those words are used. That's the lowest. That's the point at which the age

Transport committee  That's why a key point in looking at what we need from our transportation system needs to be defined by the markets. It needs to be defined by what farmers like Jeff are supplying and what customers around the world are demanding. What we can supply to the market should not be de