Agriculture committee  On the same issue, if my recollection serves me rightly--I used to be in the grain business at one time--corn sets your feed price and barley follows the corn price, and of course feed wheat follows the barley price. So basically if your corn starts being used for the biofuel, you're going to affect the price of barley and eventually feed wheat.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I would like to comment a bit. I appreciate the complexity of the beef issue--I really do. However, in Canada we do impose significant standards on the growing of products. I think we all understand that. We have pesticide regulations, we have soil regulations, we have setbacks for this, etc.

Agriculture committee  When it comes to the first nations issue, no, there is no hope of keeping that in the ALR. In fact, the whole issue of their negotiating was to obtain land for economic benefit, and economic benefit is not deemed to be something you get from agriculture today.

Agriculture committee  The first nations are getting a large chunk of land. It's going to be about 1,000 acres of land, half of which they're going to apply to have taken out of the ALR for the economic benefit. We know that's going to happen. In addition to that, we're going to lose something close to another 200 to 300 acres because of a new highway going through.

Agriculture committee  The agricultural land I'm talking about in Delta is land within the ALR, the agricultural land reserve, for those of you who don't know what that is. It's specified land on which all you can do is farm. It's not meant for industry, housing, or anything else. However, that does not stop highways or railways from finding ways, for the good of Canada or the good of the province of B.C., of being erected or constructed, and that is an issue.

Agriculture committee  First off, farmers are not opposed to wildlife and we're not opposed to environmentalism or ecological safety at all. But those are society issues; therefore, if society wants to see wildlife the way it is in its form today, they should be paying this cost. That leads me to believe this should not just be sitting as a budget item on a budget each year, but should be a funded program that can be maintained year after year, so somebody can't pull the plug and say, “You're finished at the end of March.”

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. I won't take much of your time. I will read from some notes that I have passed to the clerk for later translation. There are two items we wish to discuss with you today. One is crop loss from wildlife, and the second is Transport Canada and agriculture in Delta.