Agriculture committee  Can you ask it again?

Agriculture committee  I think so. It depends on how well the harmonization works. It might lead to a bunch of people locating in the U.S. and trying to access our market. It really depends on—

Agriculture committee  Yes, I think so. Yes.

Agriculture committee  I just want to make a quick point. For one thing, I think the pork consumers said that sometimes having the Canadian name on the brand was negative. The other thing is that we can ask the consumers about the brands that matter. I think that if you ask the grain industry, they'll say the Certificate Final for an export in Canada is worth something.

Agriculture committee  I think I was listening to testimony at this committee. A pork producer was mentioning in relation to country-of-origin labelling that being Canadian in the U.S. market was considered a negative.

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  In some markets, putting “made in Canada” on it actually can hurt your returns rather than have a positive effect.

Agriculture committee  It's because they want to buy U.S. If you're in a U.S. market, sometimes the preference is for their local market. You're just so confident in the Canadian market you don't—

Agriculture committee  In general, the open market finds the most efficient use of energy, and in general, that's how I feel about managing energy. If you subsidize the energy consumption of farmers, you might hurt them in trade access or something like that. However, I would comment that low-input agronomy isn't a place where you can get a lot of industry support for your research program, so I think it is an area where you need some kind of public investment.

Agriculture committee  Actually, I am worried about that, but I'm not sure that beyond funding the monitoring of the sector.... Agriculture Canada's been doing this with Quorum Corporation in the grain supply chain, which I fully support. I'd like better access to more data like that. However, as for regular funding, I don't know if the supply chain needs a large funding so much as it needs more diligence on the part of, say, the Canadian Grain Commission or the Competition Bureau.

Agriculture committee  I'm not a real expert in regulating and how much it costs. I think Rickey and Manish might have better answers on how complicated the process of regulation is and whether or not the current level of funding is enough to help individual firms. I feel the terms of reference in the programs you have now are broad enough that certain firms should be able to get help.

Agriculture committee  I'm not really an expert in going through those regulation processes, but to me as an economist it makes absolute sense to do that, to harmonize with a huge market that is that close to you, a market that will have a lot of the same input needs and innovative needs. Both sides of the border are farming very similar things.

Agriculture committee  I think the current revenue cap is a pretty flexible policy tool. We're worried about natural monopolies in railways, so we want to regulate them somewhat and monitor their costs, because they have the ability to price pretty harshly against competition. They could basically price against trucking as their only major competition, so it could really get out of hand.

Agriculture committee  I think there are reasons that the private sector doesn't get involved in commercialization and research in Canada. It's a relatively small market, and even if it has the same regulatory conditions as the U.S., if you have to pay to meet those regulatory conditions here in Canada, you've met the conditions for a small market compared to the U.S.

Agriculture committee  I want to comment on that market. The energy doesn't have to be natural gas.