Agriculture committee  I would just say that the biodiesel industry is a bit different from the ethanol industry, because Canada is the world's largest exporter and trader of canola products worldwide. We are 75% of the world's trade in canola and we export 75% of our production, so the situation is a bit different.

Agriculture committee  I would just reiterate that I did talk about the four points that we thought government needed to be involved in. I can circulate to the committee some documents from the canola industry on reviews about these. They provide a little more detail on some of the issues as well for your reference.

Agriculture committee  At this point in time I don't have a specific figure that I can share with you. Our industry is doing some analysis to determine what specifically might be considered by Canadian governments in order to put us on par with the United States. I think there are a number of different measures that we're looking at, because at the end of the day it has to be a Canadian approach that will necessarily be different from that taken in the United States.

Agriculture committee  If you take a look right now at where construction is for the industry in both the EU and the U.S., I think the EU is several years ahead of the U.S., and the U.S. is probably at least two years ahead of us. Brazil has been in the game for a very long time, so I can't really comment on that.

Agriculture committee  I'll speak to biodiesel and Mr. To will touch on ethanol. On biodiesel, as I indicated before, a 5% mandate is roughly 1.3 billion litres of biodiesel. When you take a look at how much canola would be required to meet that, it's roughly 2.5 million tonnes. This past year we had a 2.5-million-tonne carry-over of grain sitting in the bins and terminals.

Agriculture committee  If I could just add to that, I would encourage the committee to have a full and in-depth discussion about how trade barriers are hurting Canadian agriculture internationally. Regardless of what happens on biodiesel, we will absolutely have to deal with subsidies and trade barriers internationally.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the question. It's difficult at this time to say exactly how much it could potentially cost the Canadian government to invest in this industry. We have some benchmarks out there, and the major one is the $1 per gallon blender's tax credit that is on offer by the U.S. federal government for biodiesel.

Agriculture committee  On the question of jurisdiction, we agree that an interesting patchwork of potential measures could be put in place based on current jurisdiction. I think there are ways the federal government and provincial governments can work together to build a national strategy. The key here is to build a national approach to avoid the complexity and confusion that could reign if we have individual responses across the board.

Agriculture committee  What our industry is trying to do is encourage partnerships along the value chain, because at the end of the day those industries actually form a critical function for Canadian agriculture. At the same time, we want to work at ways to improve farmer income at farm gate and elsewhere, if at all possible.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee for giving us the opportunity to present to you today for an introductory discussion on a biofuel strategy. As I'm sure all of you know, this is an issue that is clearly close to the hearts and minds of many in the agricultural community.