Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Maguire, for the question. I think what we need to keep in mind is that agricultural producers in rural Canada by and large pay disproportionately more when it comes to pretty much everything but especially when we're talking about carbon pricing. As an example fo

Natural Resources committee  Great, thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for letting me take part in this. As mentioned, I am Keith Currie, the first vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, which I will refer to as CFA going forward. We are Canada's largest general f

Industry committee  Yes, you've seen it correctly. We've been working closely with Bob and his colleagues. As well, I have been with Rob and Richard from Ontario, so we're in line with them as well.

Industry committee  I think the next stumbling block is employees. We have to make sure we have PPE in place and that facilities have protective barriers in place to make sure we're maintaining as much capacity as possible going forward. Getting people to work there is the big issue.

Industry committee  No, I'll just follow up from where Fawn was. Eastern Canada has been suffering for some time in processing capacity, so that investment for the future is also quite necessary to help us recover post-COVID-19.

Industry committee  To this point, the only thing we've heard back is that we have to use existing programming. We've been working with our national commodities to come up with that figure. That's an aggregate number of the hurt to date, and actually those numbers are probably two weeks old now, u

Industry committee  We're definitely supportive of that. We're looking for labour. We're 15,000 to 16,000 jobs short on farms across Canada, even with a full complement of foreign labour. We are cautious, though, that just walking onto a farm and starting to work isn't as simple as it sounds. I ca

Industry committee  I don't know the exact numbers, but I know there are a lot. I planted corn yesterday beside a field that still has to be combined, so there's a lot of that going on out there. I don't know whether Scott may have some statistics. Scott, do you know the numbers there?

Industry committee  I'm not really hearing any at this time. There are more concerns about things like ethanol not being produced because of the price of gasoline right now, which will result in less supply of dried distillers' grain, which is a key protein source to a lot of cattle feed. That certa

Industry committee  The governance of the farmers' markets is a provincial jurisdiction, so depending on the province you're in, they may or may not be open. If they're not open, obviously it's a problem, but there are some provinces that are trying to make it easier for farmers to get access to far

Industry committee  We can ramp up the production, but we need the processing to go along with it. We can produce the products, but we need to get them processed. The value of our products is in the value-added, so let's ramp up the processing.

Industry committee  It's just not quite as simple as throwing on another shift in the processing plant and carrying on. The processors have been dealing with a lot of absenteeism. A lot of people are not showing up for work because either they're sick or they're scared to go in case they get sick, s

Industry committee  Training people in a hurry to run a processing facility is not easy. Certainly I know processors would be willing to do that if time allowed, but it's not a simple solution. We need more processing in general in eastern Canada. It's sorely lacking in processing.

Industry committee  I'm sorry; was that question for me? You cut out there.

Industry committee  We've been advocating for changes to AgriStability, certainly raising the reference margin level, but that would not be responsive enough or quick enough. It would be part of a suite of what we're looking for. Certainly, we've been asking for a direct investment of 5% of 2018's a