Ottawa Names New CGC Chief Commissioner

Apr 24, 2024

The federal government has appointed David Hunt as the new Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC).

Hunt, who was officially named to the post on Tuesday, replaces the outgoing Doug Corney, whose four-year term was extended to the end of this month while the search for his successor continued. Hunt's four-year term as chief commissioner of the CGC will officially begin May 13.

Hunt is a long-term Manitoba civil servant, having joined that province’s agriculture department in 2007. He held several positions, including leadership roles with Veterinary Diagnostic Services and the Livestock Industry Branch, before accepting the position of Assistant Deputy Minister for the Corporate Services and Innovation Division. Most recently, Hunt served as Assistant Deputy Minister within Manitoba's Department of Environment and Climate Change.

The CGC regulates grain handling in Canada and establishes and maintains science-based standards of quality for Canadian grain. Its research, programs and services help support Canada's reputation as a consistent and reliable source of high-quality grain.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.