Agriculture committee  Yes, thanks, Mr. Patzer. I would also like to add that last week SARM was in Ottawa, and we met with the Minister of Transport, Mr. Alghabra, and relayed our concerns. We met very recently with both CP and CN rail and they showed us their plans for winter movement and for the re

Agriculture committee  Thank you. My name is Ray Orb and I'm president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, known as SARM. I was born, raised and live in the small community of Cupar, northeast of Regina, Saskatchewan. I'd like to thank the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Ag

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the question. I have to apologize that my translation system wasn't working earlier on. For our farmers in Saskatchewan, the grain-drying aspect is much more important than heating livestock buildings. We do have some people who have buildings that hous

Agriculture committee  Yes, I think we've seen more options going on right now, like geothermal and things like that. We have buildings heated by solar and some are using wind-power electricity as well to serve those buildings. For the grain drying, our producers—our farmers—put a lot of grain throug

Agriculture committee  Well, what I'm hearing in Saskatchewan from producers is that it's much less than 15%. I think it's in the neighbourhood of 3% to 4%. That's keeping in mind that the carbon tax has gone up to $50 a tonne. As it continues to go up, if the rebates don't keep pace with that, farmers

Agriculture committee  Yes, the carbon tax is definitely a factor, but the GST on that is something we see as being really unfair. We're not sure why the federal government is charging a GST tax on top of the carbon tax. That's a bit hard to take. I wish that was something the federal government would

Agriculture committee  Yes, I do. I could actually hear the gentleman. I had problems at the beginning, but I got them straightened out.

Agriculture committee  I'm sorry, but I lost the translation for some reason.

Agriculture committee  I'm sorry, but I lost the translation.

Agriculture committee  [Technical difficulty—Editor]

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Ray Orb and I'm president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, known as SARM. I was born and raised and I live in the small community of Cupar, northeast of Regina, with a population of 625 people. I'd like to thank th

Industry committee  The oil and gas sector is really integral to the economic welfare of a lot of rural communities, because, of course, the rural municipalities in our province would be home to every pipeline that we have in this province. The linear taxation is very important. Rural municipalities

Industry committee  The environmental Impact Assessment Act—I think that's the bill you're referring to, Bill C-69—does have implications for rural municipalities and our rural economy. Part of that is actually the Navigable Waters Act. SARM was really concerned about that, about the federal governm

Industry committee  One example, which I just made reference to, is small modular reactors. SMRs are something that our province.... In particular, SaskPower and SARM have sort of been partnering on the initial consultations for that. Ottawa is not directly involved in that, although I understand th

Industry committee  No. I don't believe so.