Finance committee  The law in Québec is supposed to give supply priority to private forest owners and to link the price of wood from crown land to sales from private lots. Not many ministers would dare apply that principle to the letter. The area is out of control and the place of privately held fo

Finance committee  There are two kinds of actions. If you want to keep areas of economic activity like agriculture, which is not about made in China T-shirts, but about products almost exclusively produced for Canadian consumption—over 75% of Canadian agricultural production is consumed here—the fi

Finance committee  Traditionally, the number of bankruptcies in agriculture is not high, but a lot of people just sell out. These days, the rate of change in farm ownership and the consolidation of property is increasing, especially for hog farms. In western Canada, the hog industry works differen

Finance committee  I don't think it will be an answer for Canadian industry at all.

Finance committee  All this theory... All this theory about free trade, free enterprise, free everything.... The actual situation is bad. Certain people continue to think the market will resolve the problem by itself, and I don't think that's true. It's so bad that the finance minister has to cal

Finance committee  The price of pork is not controlled. It is a free market. The meat exchanges set the price as they do for beef, grains, and market garden products. So it is the free market and the increase of the Canadian dollar against the American dollar that impact the price directly.

Finance committee  Just because producers are selling their products at a lower price does not mean that consumers get the benefit. This week, pork at the farm gate was 35¢ per pound. We have not seen that for 25 years. But consumers pay the same prices in the store because of the concentration in

Finance committee  When the exchange rate was 85¢ on the dollar, or even 60¢ on occasion, it is true that these industries developed and captured markets at home, in North America and around the world.

Finance committee  It represents a 0.2% loss of exports in the short term and a 0.5% loss in the long term. In agriculture, this means losses in the order of $4 billion in the medium term. So these are the areas of activity that are in danger of disappearing just like the forestry industry is alrea

Finance committee  Our requests are for emergency support for the industry. For a number of years, for decades, Quebec and Canadian agriculture and forestry have been the source of tax revenue, especially for the federal government, providing very lucrative funding for Canadian society. Now that w

Finance committee  A federal government that, by definition, heads ten provinces and the territories cannot have a detailed appreciation of what is happening in each of those regions. It has its own vision. If it does not bring together the ten provincial partners and the territories to see the det

Finance committee  First, I would like to thank the members of this committee for agreeing to hear our views on the situation and on the effects of the rise of the Canadian dollar against the American dollar specifically, but more generally against other world currencies. Most of you know our orga