Agriculture committee  It's one of the solutions, but by definition, Canada exports over 50% of its beef and 50% of its pork, and that's going to be a high-quality commodity that competes around the world. So it won't take care of our business risk management issues completely.

Agriculture committee  I believe 2006 was either the first or second year that Canadian agriculture actually had a negative net income. That's a concern. The same issue that's hurting grain producers is hurting livestock producers. And the issue is not high grain prices. It's the relative value of the

Agriculture committee  I think there are some pretty simple suggestions. I would have two for you, very simple ones, and maybe we'd want to look more closely at those. In Canada, we have a cost-recovery program. CFIA is trying to recover cost fees. Our meat packing competitors in the United States ar

Agriculture committee  I think we would concur with Travis. We're concerned about the regulatory burden, about an on-level playing field in Canada compared to the rest of the world, costs that our industries are facing, including our processing industry, that our competitors are not. All of agricultur

Agriculture committee  Just a lot of prayer, Paul. That's probably one of the largest areas that has consumed our time in the last two years. Working through the pork value chain round table, we've given thought to this whole question of market collapse. What happens if a border shuts? What happens if

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today to speak with you about business risk management. I'm Clare Schlegel, president of the Canadian Pork Council, and l farm in southwestern Ontario, halfway between Buffalo and Detroit—there's no humour here. With me is Step

Agriculture committee  Can we get back to you?

Agriculture committee  We're actively working, and I'm not sure we have the solutions per se right now, but I think in tandem with the government the solutions can be found. I think you may have to weigh in from an agriculture perspective, because it's this question of human health versus industry w

Agriculture committee  I could reverse it, if that's helpful to answer. There certainly are examples where we don't have access to tools--and we call these tools in our tool box--where we're disadvantaged in relation to our competition. The other situation that has to be addressed, and addressed imm

Agriculture committee  Very much so. And we agreed earlier this week to contribute $50,000 towards the West Hawk Lake initiative. Absolutely. It's unbelievable that a country like ours hasn't achieved that prior to this.

Agriculture committee  Who wants to wade their feet into this one? I'll get myself into trouble first. There are opportunities for producers of all sizes. If you look around the world, the Danes export 90% of their production. Canada exports 50% or 60%, so we're getting up there. It's really dependent

Agriculture committee  May I make one quick comment here?

Agriculture committee  We support CAIS, but we do support a renovation to CAIS. I don't think you should hear, from our perspective, that CAIS is bad and we want it thrown out, but we do think there are some changes that can happen. Secondly, circovirus is simply another indicator that the animal wor

Agriculture committee  Let me take a stab at the second question, which has to do with why the U.S. production is increasing while Canadian production is not. I think it's simple. One thing is that 10 yen buys more pork in the United States today than it buys in Canada. It's simply a math game, and whe

Agriculture committee  I can take a quick stab, and others may want to, too. The reality of the North American marketplace is that we're an integrated market. We happen to have a 49th parallel and a border, and that causes us problems periodically. But in the grain trade and in the hog trade, frankly,