Agriculture committee  Sure, and thanks for that question. That program, agri-assurance, is certainly about allowing industry to make verifiable claims about processes or the nature of their products in terms of the health and safety of them. The goal is to help industry build capacity towards explaini

Agriculture committee  If people are making false claims, I think certainly governments or others would want to look at ensuring that if people are making unverifiable claims that are misleading those will be challenged. These programs would be more about building, if you will, verifiable standards or

Agriculture committee  Well, we certainly always look at how we can leverage the people we have and the teams we have in terms of how Agriculture Canada, with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Global Affairs Canada, can work together collaboratively with industry to do as much as we can with the

Agriculture committee  I'm not going to answer in terms of Ontario. I'm not familiar with Ontario's policies. I would just say again that value-added processing was a priority when ministers came together to talk the summer before last in Calgary about priorities for this agricultural partnership. Cert

Agriculture committee  We don't set aside specific funding for specific sectors in the programming. The programming I talked about is all application based. In a specific sector or company, it will depend on the application and how it fits in under the programming. In some sense, it's hard for me to an

Agriculture committee  Yes. The second part is that we do have a value-chain round table with the organic sector—

Agriculture committee  —that does try to work through some of these issues about coordination and, again, how we can leverage different efforts for consultation and engagement. I know that doesn't answer your funding question per se, but it—

Agriculture committee  We're Agriculture Canada, so if it's a financial issue or a program issue related to our material, yes.

Agriculture committee  We working first of all with the provinces and territories, which are obviously our financial partners in BAM, and then obviously the farmers and industry are the users of the programs, so all are involved. The process is a joint federal-provincial process. The minister has task

Agriculture committee  The minister's task was to have a review, with results or recommendations back by next July. I don't want to prejudge the outcome as to whether those would be specific changes, directional...or exactly how those will look. We'll have to see exactly how that plays out.

Agriculture committee  Yes. I think the minister committed to that. We can share that material.

Agriculture committee  Well, I don't have a precise date. I say in the next few months; when exactly over the winter or spring that will be I think will depend a bit on a range of issues, but we will try to do that in the time.

Agriculture committee  The program is a $250-million program, yes. That's the way programs work.

Agriculture committee  Again, I hate to comment on a hypothetical application, but certainly we have a range of programming, depending on the nature of what someone is looking for, whether it's assurance.... We do marketing programming for people looking to export. We have science and innovation progra

Agriculture committee  Certainly our view would be that we want to give producers the choice to produce the way they want to produce. Certainly if there are those who wish to produce in an organic fashion, there would be no reason to dissuade them. We look at our research proposals and where we do rese