Honourable colleagues, I rise today to congratulate the 2018 inductees to the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. The five inductees, Ted Bilyea, Peter Dhillon, Wilf Keller, Larry Martin, and the Honourable Gerry Ritz, have greatly influenced Canadian agriculture. They were officially inducted into the Hall of Fame on November 4, 2018.

The Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame Association was created in 1960. Since then, its board of directors annually judges nominees and selects recipients who have done great things in the field of agriculture across Canada. To celebrate their achievements, their portraits are hung in a gallery housed at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.

I certainly do not have time here today to list all of the many accomplishments of the 2018 recipients, but I would like to highlight a few.

Ted Bilyea spent 34 years working with Maple Leaf Foods and as a leading consultant across the agricultural value chain.

Peter Dhillon, a leading cranberry farmer and President and CEO of Richberry Group, is the first non-American Chair of the Board of Ocean Spray.

Larry Martin was the founding executive director and then CEO of the George Morris Centre in Guelph and chaired a competitiveness task force for the Canada-U.S. trade negotiations.

The Honourable Gerry Ritz served as the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food from 2007 to 2015.

Wilf Keller, who is sitting in the gallery today, has had a 45‑year career in the field of agriculture. His achievements include the advancements in canola breeding through biotechnology. Thanks in large part to Mr. Keller, canola now covers more acreage than any other field crop in Canada. Mr. Keller also helped establish the Protein Industries Canada Supercluster. He worked at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for 16 years and spent 19 years at the National Research Council’s Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon. He has been President and CEO of Genome Prairie and is still President and CEO of Ag‑West Bio Inc. and Chair of the Agricultural Institute of Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Keller, for your many invaluable contributions to Canadian agriculture over many years.

Colleagues, I hope you’ll join me in congratulating these five agricultural leaders for their recent induction into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame.

I, for one, am looking forward to seeing who the 2019 inductees will be. Thank you.