Agriculture committee  The way we get engaged in a research project is we have a process we call an opportunity analysis. It's not really about the size; it's really about its potential to create impact and the potential for growth. Artisanal cheese turns into bigger cheese making and into industrial-scale cheese making.

Agriculture committee  I would say that we've always seen Europe as an opportunity, and of course many of our growers are, for example, Dutch, and they have already existing connections to European markets. So you'll see things like our Pixie grape, which is a miniature ornamental grape, moving its way into those European markets as we speak.

Agriculture committee  That's right. You just needed to pave the way a little bit, make it easier.

Agriculture committee  Clusters, as you know, be they physical or virtual, bring people together to make innovation happen. It's an important thing that we're all together rubbing shoulders and talking and competing, and creating ideas and creating forward momentum. That's the concept. How you do it again depends on the organization, but it's important that you do it.

Agriculture committee  The research part creates the discovery. That's where the real value is. It's something new, something better, something we've never seen before. You have that idea, that concept, and then now you need to do the work it takes to get it to the marketplace. There's adaptive research, applied research.

Agriculture committee  To be completely frank, we're doing pretty well. Recently, maybe it was last week, there was a joint federal-provincial announcement of $26.5 million of federal-provincial funding for the next five years to take us to 2018. That provides for us half of what we need to operate. The other half we get out of—and I'll put it in quotes—“the marketplace”.

Agriculture committee  I don't know whether this is a word, but part of it is what I'd call the “greenhouse-ification” of agriculture. One of the ways to mitigate against climate change is to put product under a controlled environment structure. We're starting to see, for example, more strawberries or other berries under tunnels and fruit trees under tunnels.

Agriculture committee  Yes, it has been meaningful, just to answer the last question first. As to examples, I like to look at the greenhouse industry and to see how it has developed from a very small set of operations in Leamington and Niagara, in Ontario, as an example, into this burgeoning industry worth literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Agriculture committee  We have a number of projects that either are funded under that initiative or are being evaluated under that initiative. I'd say that it has done pretty well, that it is accessible, that we've managed to put the partnerships together. The requirements are reasonably stringent and you know they want to achieve results at the end of it.

Agriculture committee  Yes, I do. I'd agree that, again, we have kept the very best. Certainly in our organization we've grown from just one person to 86 over the past six years. A lot of those people have Ph.D.s and master's degrees. They're very smart and very capable and very entrepreneurial. They've come from across Canada and around the world.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and thanks to the committee for your wisdom in conducting this study. Innovation and competitiveness in agriculture are so important to our collective prosperity. As I understand it, to be competitive requires us to be innovative, so in that manner we'd be rapidly creating and deploying new technologies that keep us ahead.

Agriculture committee  Yes, I can. Can you hear me?

Agriculture committee  In horticulture, if I might speak for horticulture, it's absolutely critical. Our big problem is labour cost. Most of the labour—or a lot of it—is offshore labour, and it's not sustainable in the long run. As situations get better in the countries we draw labour from, they'll be less likely to come, so we need to automate.

Agriculture committee  The British have a pretty good food policy you could have a look at. It's very good. And New Zealand.

Agriculture committee  Well, it's the only one, so what do we have to compare it with? It's the only one I've read anyway, the British one. It's simply clarity, that's all, and you can see that underneath now the European Union and their ag research committee have created more clarity around looking at food policy.