Industry committee  They charge you a fee.

Industry committee  There is room for improvement in the system.

Industry committee  Potentially, it could, but I think having more harmonized regulation would be the better alternative. That way, you couldn't have a jurisdiction that would have more favourable qualifications than another jurisdiction. I think it would be better to have a more of a harmonized app

Industry committee  It's supposed to be.

Industry committee  No, it's not the case in Ontario. As I mentioned before, there is a new bill coming forward, but it's not in place yet.

Industry committee  Quebec is further advanced than any other province. Quebec and B.C. are probably your two provinces that would have a higher level. Nearly half, 49%, of organic processing is in Quebec.

Industry committee  I think it's not one or the other, but maybe creating one across Canada and adopting one instead of having provincial regulations. Right now, if I process in an Ontario, abattoir, I can't sell my product in Quebec. If we had an overarching regulation, like the USDA example, that

Industry committee  It simplifies it and it allows for cross-province and interstate trade.

Industry committee  Yes. If you want to use our neighbours to the south as an example, they actually are much more progressive as far as allowing for halal, any type of...especially kosher is concerned. Their systems are a little bit better at handling that. Also, there's the investment environment

Industry committee  The USDA is the overarching body that sets the overarching framework. The states then can only do a certain amount. It's not like in Canada where we have in Ontario OMAFRA doing certain things.... When we start to look at how many agencies get involved in an agrifood process, it'

Industry committee  We're actually in transition. We're in the second year of transitioning our farm to organic, so a lot of this is new. We were coming from a monoculture cropping type of system—a cash crop—and we're now moving into diversified organic. A regenerative agriculture system is what we'

Industry committee  Yes, and I think you were alluding, as part of that, to small versus medium versus large. A lot of the regulations are written around the majority of the business that's being done, which is on the large scale. You have abattoirs or food processors that are very large in scale. O

Industry committee  Good morning, my apologies for the delay. My name is Michael MacGillivray. I am a small business owner. I own a farm about 100 kilometres due east of here in a little place called North Glengarry. It's part of the regional municipality of SDG. I've been asked to come to represe