Agriculture committee  Our position has been that the reason we exempt agriculture is that we don't have options. We just end up pushing food production to other jurisdictions through leakage. Really, the place to invest is on the innovation and technology front to help producers make changes when they're available and to invest in that research portion.

Agriculture committee  I would like to reiterate that having those be outcome-based and letting the producers figure out what the solution is, that is really important. Enabling them to do that is key. I'll continue on the forestry example. If you want to do fencing in British Columbia, it's somewhere upwards of $20,000 per kilometre.

Agriculture committee  Our environmental goals are certainly a portion of that. Right now, though, we're particularly focused on carbon markets and the development of protocols so that meaningful protocols will be put in place to recognize the practices done by beef producers so that we can further our contribution.

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely. We've been going to great lengths to make sure that we can measure it so that we can set goals to reduce it. As Duane mentioned in his comments, we already have a footprint that is 50% of the world average. Our producers, in partnership with veterinarians, nutritionists and researchers who keep on driving it forward, are certainly focused on that reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions.

Agriculture committee  I certainly appreciate that question, and I must admit that I think we perhaps took it for granted for a bit too long that Canadians were connected to the farm and really understood what was happening on the farms. We are fully aware that we need to have very serious conversations with Canadians to help them understand that beef production in Canada preserves a native ecosystem, one that's endangered and one that is very integrated with the success of the cropping ecosystem in Canada too, so we're certainly fully in on this.

Agriculture committee  I would add that through the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef certified sustainable program—it's outcome-based, so farmers can choose how they would like to deliver on the outcomes that we're looking for—the use of environmental farm plans has been very helpful for some producers in proving what they've been able to do.

Agriculture committee  We do have a number of goals. I'm really happy to share them and how we plan on achieving them. A few of them are to safeguard the 35 million acres of native grasslands. I would note that those are the native grasslands, but there are, of course, all the tame grasslands and the hay lands that also offer pollinator habitat and all the other benefits too.

Agriculture committee  Thanks. I'm going to take some of the questions, and then pass it over to Duane. Certainly what we see is that, when grazing is done well, we're really able to stack the benefits that come with that. You could have a biodiversity benefit, a wetland restoration, flood mitigation, all of these different stacking benefits, and I think that's really exciting, particularly to those in the market who are certainly interested in greenhouse gases but are also interested in the rippling effects that go along with them.

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss the environmental contributions of Canada’s beef sector. My name is Fawn Jackson, and I’m the director of policy and international affairs with the CCA. With me today is Duane Thompson, a beef producer from Saskatchewan and the chair of CCA's environment committee.

Environment committee  Coordination across the provinces with the federal government, whether it's through this, offset protocols or I suppose any other initiative on climate change, is going to be extremely important to making sure we get that right. If it's too confusing, that's when we run into not being able to achieve the goals we want to achieve.

Environment committee  We would absolutely support holistic policy analysis with full data, because when you get really tunnel focused in one direction, you can lose the forest for the trees—or perhaps the grass for the grasslands is a better example here. We think that it's very important . I would also like to say that I think all of agriculture offers really amazing nature-based solutions, so whether you're looking at crops or livestock, I think that the sector should really be looked at as a key sector for both economic growth and the environmental outcomes that we're looking for.

Environment committee  Absolutely. It would be our pleasure.

Environment committee  Yes, it was environmental organizations and beef producers talking about how Canadian grasslands are really Canada's Amazon rainforest or our coral reef, and what we need to do to protect them because they're disappearing at very alarming rates. It's quite an emotional short film.

Environment committee  Reynold, do you want to take that?

Environment committee  With Bill C-12 we want to make sure that there's holistic policy analysis done and that folks from the agriculture community are there to understand and advise on it.