Agriculture committee  I think red tape or regulations are important, as you say, to ensure our food safety. Part of it is this educational component of those innovations like flow cytometry online tools that can be used to automatically detect food safety issues, rather than some of the old technologies that are proven and that our regulations are built around.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. MacGregor. I agree. As Dr. Yada from UBC and Dr. Van Acker from Ontario Agricultural College and I talked about, we do need to build in this resilience with small “boutique” food processing operations so that there is this ability. When you have fractured supply chains—and it didn't happen much, but it is a real potential in terms of the efficiencies driving these long supply chains—you certainly put urban populations at risk of food insecurity.

Agriculture committee  I will answer in English if it's okay with you.

Agriculture committee  Certainly, there is a need for investment. Mr. Graydon made the case that there need to be better margins on manufactured foods for this investment to occur. We would say that there needs to be this investment not only in the food processing innovation—some of the technologies that Mr.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here today on behalf of the Deans' Council to discuss food processing in Canada, a topic that's even more critical in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. After a brief introduction to the Deans' Council—Agriculture, Food and Veterinary Medicine faculties, we wish to address two things.