Agriculture committee  One point on this is that in any investment you always want to have an assurance of stable supply. If you don't have that, you're not going to be very successful in your investment. So if we are to invest in ethanol plants, let's say in Ontario, we need to ensure that they have s

Agriculture committee  In terms of the top four needs, they're very similar to what Mr. Bjornson is saying here: renewable fuel standards to create that demand draw; parity with the U.S. in terms of tax incentives for processing and blending on the excise tax for fuel to further incentivize and create

Agriculture committee  I have one more comment. In this process from top to bottom, from feedstock all the way to retail, inevitably in any strategy we come up with there will be problems, and things are not going to be perfect. I think the policy also has to be nimble. If we see a roadblock here, or

Agriculture committee  Just to add one point, I'm not certain we are advocating that the federal government build those plants with their dollars as well, but certainly provide the incentives for the private sector and farmers to invest in those plants. We can have loan guarantees. There was a slaugh

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure, but I know 80% of their vehicles are flex-fuel vehicles, so they can use up to 85%. But I'm not sure of the exact percentage.

Agriculture committee  There have been studies by NRCan to show that we do have the ability to export, maybe not on the biodiesel side, but certainly if we move into cellulosic ethanol. We have a lot of wood residues, wheat and corn stover, and several other residue products that could be very successf

Agriculture committee  That was an example. I'm not too sure how Canada might want to address it. It was a particular response, giving tax exemptions to built biofuel fuelling stations and that kind of thing. Those are all incentives to facilitate the flow of productivity. There was a roadblock there.

Agriculture committee  That would be a requirement, just as Mr. Bjornson said--building strategic partnerships and alliances with the oil distributors and the blenders and these kinds of things.

Agriculture committee  Yes, we have considered that, and that's part of the reason why we've put targeted support for primary producers into our diagram. Let's face it, we have to understand what we're competing with. Farmers and processors can be very competitive here in Canada, but we also need com

Agriculture committee  Thank you for inviting us to speak to you today. I'd first like to express apologies from Bob Friesen and Marvin Shauf. They were unable to make it today, on short notice. I will be making the presentation in their stead. We've circulated some documents--I hope they've gotten t