International Trade committee  Cathy reiterated our position quite a bit. I think that legislating this into trade negotiations is showing our hand before we are even at the table, and I think that is detrimental to any trade negotiation. I'll turn it over.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. I am James Bekkering, past chair of the National Cattle Feeders' Association. I am joined by Cathy Jo Noble, vice-president of NCFA, who is there with you today. I speak to you today from my farm in Taber, Alberta. I own and operate a cattl

Agriculture committee  Yes, as you alluded to, I think some of these newer technologies, such as 3-NOP, would be widely adopted by the feedlot industry, because we can implement that fairly quickly compared to the larger cow-calf sector.

Agriculture committee  Currently, for every tonne of grain we process, the carbon tax alone is 75¢. When we increase it going forward, it will be $2.50 per tonne. Right now we gain efficiencies by doing the steam flaking. It is still cost-effective for us to do this process because of the high commodit

Agriculture committee  In Alberta, all our cattle are currently housed outdoors, so the heating of the barns is not as significant as it is in the eastern cattle industry. The only barns we heat are our medical barns, for treating sick cattle. It's not as significant a part of our operation compared to

Agriculture committee  Some of the challenges that have been talked about previously are the technology and where it's going with electrifying some of the heating devices and their reliability. Someone pointed out that we need to make sure our technology is running at all times. We do not have the peop

Agriculture committee  We are one of the few feedlots in our sector so far that does a steam-flaking process, because we utilize a lot of corn on our farm and it's a more efficient way of processing that grain. There's been some increase in that as well, and it's essentially adding efficiency to the g

Agriculture committee  No, we did not.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. On behalf of the National Cattle Feeders' Association, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee on Bill C-234. The National Cattle Feeders' Association is the voice of Canada's cattle feeders. We work to improve the growth, sustainabil

Transport committee  It pretty much brought the trade to a standstill, because not every port can handle animal crossings. From here, after Coutts, I think Emerson is the next port from Alberta to Manitoba that live cattle can cross. Then, into B.C., Kingsgate is the next one. Some of these cattle we

Transport committee  For the feed-lot sector itself in terms of the B.C. flooding, the impacts that we felt were getting supplies, our inputs. Certain things come by rail from foreign shippers with products that we need, and that delayed what we need for inputs. We haven't seen the effects of the Ma

Transport committee  I will speak first, and if Janice wants to add, she can. When we talk about the regulation side of things—and we did bring this up—there's the disconnect between the transport regulations and the CFIA regulations. One of the disappointing aspects, especially on the CFIA regulatio

Transport committee  Thank you. Good afternoon, I am the chair of the National Cattle Feeders' Association, and a feedlot owner in Taber, Alberta. I'm joined by the president and CEO of the National Cattle Feeders'. NCFA was established in 2007 as a unified voice for Canadian cattle feeders. The fo

Agriculture committee  It is very important. One thing we've discussed here is that all over the world there are supply chain issues. It's unfortunate that such a small number of people, a small part of the population—be they unionized workers or those in the recent blockades—can bring cause a detrimen

Agriculture committee  The international mandate has definitely had an effect. It has taken another portion of the workforce out of what is already an industry with a short supply of truckers. I can't even imagine what an interprovincial mandate would do. So much cattle flows between provinces. To my m