Evidence of meeting #37 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was srm.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Mr. Steckle was on time, so just a quick response, if possible. There's no response? Okay.
Mr. Gaudet, please, five minutes.
4:55 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Earlier, you talked about Europe. I'm curious as to what is happening on that continent. Countries have taken action in this area. Briefly, can you tell me what being done?
4:55 p.m.
President, Rothsay, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
I think that post-BSE, they've essentially eliminated any type of ruminant-based feed from the feed chain. Depending on where you are in Europe, they've done anything from putting it back through cement kilns to storing it in airport hangers to incinerate it. But it has been a huge cost to either the industry or the governments. I think it varies by region.
I don't think they necessarily have the solutions we had talked about earlier. Right now—and I haven't been there recently—they are rendering the material down, taking the proteins, and either sending it through cement kilns or whatever.
It's very costly. Their industry has just driven costs up. I'm not sure how much per head it was, but it's a lot of money.
5 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
What is the percentage of animals in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec?
Or, if you prefer, I will put the question to you a different way. How much do Quebec, Ontario and Alberta need to invest in order for you to be satisfied?
5 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Meat Council
In so far as the $80 million is concerned, are you asking how many animals, percentage wise, are slaughtered in these provinces?
5 p.m.
Bloc
5 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Meat Council
We don't have any official figures yet. They haven't yet been released.
5 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
For instance, if Alberta accounts for 60% of the cattle slaughtered, Quebec, for 15%, Ontario, for 14%, and the remaining provinces, for 1%, some provinces may not want to make any kind of investment at all.
Would it be better to proceed by territory, as was the case in 2003 when many were requesting this? Another case of mad cow was reported last week. Newspaper and television reports make this out to be...Yet, we never hear the Americans talking about mad cow disease. I have a problem with that. The Americans are going to stick it to us once again where this matter is concerned.
5 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Meat Council
That's a good question. In fact, you might want to put it to Agriculture and Agri-food Canada officials. They could explain to you how the $80 million were allocated. As I understand it, the funds were allocated according to need, but I'm not sure how that was defined. They were not allocated on the basis of the overall number of animals slaughtered.
5 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
Would the territorial approach be appropriate in terms of managing BSE? From what you've just said, if more cases are reported, we won't be any further ahead on July 12 than we were five years ago.
You may say that parliamentarians are to blame for this state of affairs. I'd like you to give us some information so that we can put questions to government members.
5 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Meat Council
The mistake may have been made back in 1867 when the Constitution was signed and responsibility for agriculture was shared among the provinces. That's the answer, but we're not looking to blame anyone. We're looking for a solution. And, we believe the solution, quite simply, would be for the federal Department of Agriculture and Agri-food and for the provincial ministries of agriculture to sign agreements to move this matter forward.
5 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
To clarify a point, it wouldn't necessarily matter whether we find more cases or not. The reality is that we've had the cases, we've been defined, and we're going through this risk classification with OIE to determine what it is. But unless we have many more cases.... In fact, with all the controls we have in place, and the way the OIE guidelines are stated today, it would not change our risk status. We continue to look for more cases, because we're committed to having all the safeguards in place.
The final safeguard is a full implementation of this feed ban. That's why we're committed to it, because then it won't matter how many more cases we have. I just wanted to clarify that.
In the longer term, if we do this and it's effective, the win for the country and our producers is that over the next decade, we can eliminate finding more cases. Over time, we can get back to negligible risk status, where we may not be required to have all these conditions in place.
5 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
In addition, our programs concerning the health of animals are national, not provincial. As far as we know, agriculture isn't divided provincially; it's national. There are issues related in our Constitution to property rights and so forth that are divided along different....
The industry as a whole is committed to a national approach on this, and it's essential work. Instead of counting the number of cases you find, which is still important, the whole world is moving towards looking at the controls people have put in place. That's what's really important around this issue.
5 p.m.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
I'm not interested in asking questions about the many different cases. I'm interested in finding out why the provincial ministries and the federal department have been unable to agree on a solution over the past five years. That's what bothers me. I'm not interested in asking questions about the nine or ten cases reported. I simply mentioned the last one that was reported.
How is it that no progress has been made in the past five years? As usual, you're going to do the work hastily and it will be poorly done. That's what happens when a deal is signed at the last minute, to mollify everyone.
Thank you. I'm just telling it like it is.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Barry Devolin Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Thank you.
One thing that's tough when you're asking question six is that a lot of the questions have already been asked.
Mr. Wildeman, I think that your comment, which was—I'll paraphrase—that if it wasn't for deadlines lots of things would never get done, is true in this case. As you approach a deadline, you cross a couple of panic points. The first panic point is, if I don't do something right now, I'm not going to be finished on time. Then there's a second panic point, which is that it actually doesn't matter what I do now, there's no way I'm going to get done by the deadline. Is it safe to say now we're at the second panic point?
You can't get a two-car garage built in three months. I can't imagine how facilities are going to get built that require funding, when the regulations haven't been developed yet. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect here.
Are we still talking about having things ready by July 12?
5:05 p.m.
Vice-President, Canadian Cattlemen's Association
Maybe I'll turn it over to Kevin, but my initial thought would simply be that this is why we're talking about problems. We need to define this first part of funding, so we know what it's for.
We're already saying that there are going to be some transitional measures, because it's likely now that not everybody's going to be fully enabled by July 12. Some will be enabled; some won't. So the volumes that have to go to a landfill either not rendered, unprocessed, or fully segregated may not occur.
We still believe a significant portion of the industry, these big players, can make it, but not everybody can make it. That's why we're already starting to talk about what we need to do after this in the next transitional period, recognizing that it's likely that not everyone is going to make it.
Kevin, maybe you could add to this.
5:05 p.m.
President, Rothsay, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
It's interesting to understand what Mr. Steckle said earlier, that this is going to cost the country money versus the Americans because we're not harmonized. Everybody understands that. We're dealing with it. The issue now is that because we're so close to the deadline, it's going to cost us possibly a whole lot more. What's going to happen is that we can't segregate in time, and so we can't save the so-called “good” raw material to make into finished products that go to Kathleen. We have to possibly throw it all into the “bad” stuff. We can do that, no problem. That can happen, it's just that the economics are very stringent.
The only other issue, when we're not 100% sure we can execute that, is whether we can find landfills to take that material. As we've said, if we take it all to Dundas and it's all bad stuff except the tallow, then we've got thousands of tonnes each week of rendered meat and bonemeal that can't be sold and that has to go somewhere. It has an economic cost to the industry, which is what these gentlemen were talking about. But also, it's one thing if you can execute it, but can you take it somewhere? I don't think we have that nailed yet.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Barry Devolin Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
Shouldn't it be fairly easy to find out whether landfills are prepared to take it or not?
5:05 p.m.
President, Rothsay, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
Landfills are in the same situation as everybody else here. I talked about the access to capital. Some of these landfills actually have to open up space, or whatever. If they've applied for capital, they're not going to do anything until they've been given approval. Plus, there's some permitting.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Barry Devolin Conservative Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON
On the $80 million that the federal government has put up, if there aren't even signed deals with the provinces yet--not to mention the fact that the provinces haven't committed whether they're putting dollars in it or not--fast-tracking this is weeks or months, it's not hours and days. Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic here, but realistically, unless you identify some shortcut, given that we're already too late as to what can be done by July 12, I don't see how. Keep hoping that the federal government will sign the deals with the provinces. Keep hoping that the regs will come. Keep hoping that you can find builders to do this stuff in time. How do all those things fit together in four months?
5:10 p.m.
President, Rothsay, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
I think those were and are for capital improvements. If you look down the chain, Kathleen's group, as I said earlier, can be ready today because they don't have to buy it. As for Jim's people, from the packing standpoint, I'm not sure if you're absolutely sure they can all be ready by a certain date, but the larger ones will be ready, or it'll all be SRM material anyway. The renderers can be ready as well, because it's just a matter of turning everything we have now into rendered material. Everything can happen, it's just that the cost is prohibitive, and we have to have a final resting point for that stuff when we take it away.
In the mid to longer term, we're looking for capital improvements to try to mitigate the cost. In the short term, this is going to be very costly and we have to find places to take it, and those haven't yet been nailed down. Part of the reason it hasn't been nailed down is that some of those landfills either haven't agreed to it or they're waiting for money as well. I think it actually can happen, it's just that the longer we go, the more costly it gets in the short term.
5:10 p.m.
Executive Director, Animal Nutrition Association of Canada
I was just going to reiterate some of that. We can absolutely be ready for July 12. In fact, we're going to have to be largely ready for May 1. We know from our conversations with the largest packers in the country that they'll be ready even for May 1 to segregate their lines.
The real issue, though, is that we're going to have to be very creative about where we put all this stuff come May 1, or July 12, and all the time in between. Part of the conversations that have to take place with the provinces aren't just about the $80 million and signing federal-provincial agreements, it's also speaking with each of the provinces to ensure they're having the right conversations with their landfill operators and with all the different disposal outlets. It could actually be that come July 12, or even before, we have to store this material somewhere until we really do have a viable disposal mechanism.
We'll be ready. It just won't be as pretty and as clean as we would like it to be, if you will. We certainly won't have the permanent infrastructure in place. Even then, we're really going to have move heaven and earth, and we're going to have to have all the right conversations take place in all of the provinces across the country with all of the industries so this can work.
From the beginning we said, when we did our report, that the challenge here is largely a coordination exercise. Where it really falls apart is that we're trying to coordinate disposal of a product that has essentially no value. We like to pretend that markets will take care of themselves, but we're talking about garbage. It's waste product, it has no value, and if you have to pick it up, in fact it starts to have negative value.
How do we make sure all the right people are having the conversations? That's where we've been trying to put pressure on the provincial government, the various departments in the federal government, and those conversations are going to have to take place every day certainly for the next 12 weeks. And even then, there's no doubt that we're going to have to store some of this material somewhere.