Agriculture committee  There has been a request from the president, and there has been a letter from Minister Bibeau to her counterpart, introducing herself, underscoring the importance of the issue, and supporting the request of the president to arrange a meeting. So both the minister and the presiden

Agriculture committee  That is a good question, thank you. As I said in my opening comments, sustained efforts with China are always needed. We have been involved with China with canola, and you heard from the speakers this morning about how long we've been trading with them. I think I outlined very c

Agriculture committee  I'm sorry. We need to have a meeting face to face, after everything, in order to really clarify the interpretation. I think you had the question.... Our interpretation I very clearly outlined—

Agriculture committee  That's un autre good question. Yes is the short answer. The thing is that science is never 100% sure. You know how we can detect things at a million and billion parts per thing. But in everything I've outlined of what we've done, and we've done it again, I have strong confidence

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Chairman and committee. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about recent events impacting Canadian canola seed exports to China. The canola sector creates an estimated 250,000 jobs in the country while generating over $26

Agriculture committee  Communicating with Canadians and others is always something we are doing. Clarity about what we grow and produce in Canada, and how we do it, is something we are always striving to do at the agriculture department and CFIA.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for your comment.

Agriculture committee  It's a good question. I would like to say we have the highest-quality wheat in the world. They use it and they buy it for the reasons we have. If there were a reason they were not able to purchase that wheat for a prolonged period of time, I'm assuming traders would be looking fo

Agriculture committee  Right. It wasn't brought to our attention until January 31 of this year. The process, which has been outlined, went very quickly from the testing there. Now, when you look at it, some people might ask why it's taken a year, but that's not putting it in the right context—how it w

Agriculture committee  I have to say that I didn't prepare for that question. That was a good one.

Agriculture committee  I'll start by saying that the Japanese are very science-based. That's why they're very rigorous in how they look at it. We have a high level of comfort with the Japanese and how they look at things. Right now, in all of the cases we've had—I lived through the BSE “era”, if we m

Agriculture committee  Thank you. In every instance like this, there are always lessons learned. We take that. We understand it. We're always wanting to do better in things, so we capture all of these points from both your committee and the industry. We capture them and review them. Right now we're mu

Agriculture committee  You can start.

Agriculture committee  I would also add what I think is important for Canada. We have been open and transparent. That's been one of the mottos of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as well as just overall how we handle.... We're continuing that and having a dialogue, as we've indicated, with the indus