Agriculture committee  If I could briefly add to that—I don't know if I have a moment—I would just add the other point that we, as farm organizations, are working internationally with our counterparts on the need to ensure there is appropriate discipline at the WTO to ensure that all of those measures

Agriculture committee  It's my understanding as well, yes.

Agriculture committee  Yes. We have made submissions to the government, to Transport Canada, with respect to the needs on this front. I would say that there are two components, one being the long-term need to harmonize regulations around that 240-kilometre radius, but the more immediate element we're

Agriculture committee  I can't speak to the broader network of organizations that are working together. There is a whole host of us working together on this, recognizing that this is of shared import for the entire livestock industry. I can't comment on what others have done. Certainly the substance o

Agriculture committee  I'm not familiar with the protections that are in place. I know that when it comes to the traceability systems referenced by Ms. Patterson, certainly blockchain technology has some fundamental privacy protections embedded in it. These are intended to protect information and ens

Agriculture committee  I'll let my colleague Pierre also respond to this. I would suggest that from a traceability standpoint, we're always in favour of strong traceability systems and we think that they certainly do add value wherever possible. At the CFA, we tend to not get directly involved in the

Agriculture committee  I would suggest that one point that's important to note here is that we're not necessarily talking about extensive periods past the hours of service limits. This is a small amount of time. When it comes to flexibility, we look at the commercial vehicle drivers hours of service r

Agriculture committee  Yes. We would always be in favour of national consistency. Training is an absolutely critical component of that, certainly.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Scott Ross. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. I should be joined shortly by our vice-president, Pierre Lampron, who is a dairy farmer from Quebec. The CFA is Canada largest general far

Agriculture committee  I think there are a few critical elements. One of them is certainly a point that was raised earlier: The code of conduct will not exist in isolation. The Competition Act and competition law need to be closely looked at as to whether there is sufficient enforcement capacity to r

Agriculture committee  I can speak to that as I'm involved more directly in that process. We are approaching a stage where we will have a code of conduct to present that is approaching implementation. It's very hard to say with certainty how long the implementation of a code will take. We also have f

Agriculture committee  With the announcement of the sustainable Canadian agricultural partnership, we see a very high-level agreement. The details of the programs are still being ironed out in many respects. The ability of those programs to adapt is to be seen. I think that structure and the nature of

Agriculture committee  I think the starting point for the CFA has always been that any code of conduct must be mandatory and enforceable. I think that can mean different things in different situations. There's not a prescriptive approach to what that necessarily looks like in practice. However, I think

Agriculture committee  The increase in the interest-free portion of the advance payments program is a long-standing interest of ours, and we're really pleased to see that. We hope that can be made permanent, recognizing that these inflationary pressures will have long-standing impacts. On the fertiliz

Agriculture committee  When it comes to the code of conduct, obviously it's still a work-in-progress. As you know, some of the ongoing discussions relating to that are still confidential in nature, but I will say that, undeniably, transparency is one of the core tenets of what we're trying to pursue th