Agriculture Committee on May 17th, 2007

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I think, actually, if you looked in Hansard, you might find most of it as well.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

No, no, but you're quoting—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

If you can supply us.... If you can't do it today, if you can do it next week, look up the source of your quotes, we'd appreciate that.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

That sounds good.

I want to move on, Mr. Chair, to try to put another piece of the puzzle together, and that's the part about disaster relief.

One of the commitments we made during the campaign was that we were going to try to come forward with a disaster relief program that would work for farmers, so we are working toward putting a new disaster framework in place. Federal, provincial, and territorial governments have agreed in principle on a new disaster framework, subject to the appropriate authorities. That is going to be separate from stabilization programming, and this of course shouldn't be any surprise to anyone, because we've been working on this for a while.

With this government, we hope we'll be able to respond jointly to disasters and put in short-term actions that will then help producers quickly.

We've already done some things, Mr. Chair. We've put the $90 million cover crop protection program in place. That program provides assistance to producers who were affected by flooding and excess moisture in 2005 and 2006.

Total program financial approvals to date for that program are over $63 million. So that program has worked well. I know in regions of my province and other places across this country, it was important for producers to have that help. There were places where people had so much moisture they could not even get into the field to seed their crop last year. We're seeing a little bit more of that this year, but not so far, to the extent we saw it last year.

Of course, it's a very frustrating situation for farmers when they find themselves not able to even seed their crop and they know they're not going to have any income for the year. That's one of the reasons we responded as quickly as we did, to try to help them out.

Also, $16.5 million has gone to British Columbia to try to support flood mitigation work in the province this year. They may have flooding because of the large snowpack in the mountains, so this government has already moved to try to address some of that issue as well.

We had a drought in several areas of this country last year and some of it extended from the year before. One of the interests and desires of the minister has been to work with provincial governments in trying to come to some resolution with some financing for those situations.

I know my area is one of the areas where we have had a drought. An area there has drought for two years, but it's been frustrating, Mr. Chair, because the provincial government in my province refuses to even acknowledge there's a problem or an emergency. They just say their figures don't show there's an emergency. Even though we've got people who have run out of feed and dugouts are going dry, the provincial government has just said they're not accepting there's a big problem.

The British Columbia government has shown a little different reaction. They had drought in their northern areas and they sat down with the minister and talked to him and they've been able to come to some agreement. In the last couple of weeks, we were able to announce an investment of $4.5 million in direct payments which, when combined with the Government of British Columbia's $3 million, meant that $7.5 million went to B.C. ranchers who are affected by drought. Of course this has meant ranchers will have help to pay increased cost for feed, for water, and for other expenses caused by the drought.

It's been frustrating for me to sit in a situation where we still have a drought in parts of my riding, and not be able to convince the provincial government there is any kind of a problem we need to deal with. If we could get them onside, we might be able to do something for these farmers.

I think our provincial government obviously has enough problems of its own. I think one of its cabinet ministers resigned today, and a number of their members have made a decision they're not running again because they see they're in trouble with the electorate, so that's made it even more frustrating, because they really seem to be a lame-duck administration at this point.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Point of order, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Is he able to tell us how many Conservatives from the previous government are still in jail, just to keep us going in his discussion?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

That's not a point of order.

Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

It may be an interesting point of order later, because there is some question as to whether the police were given accurate information from the present government. If I'm not mistaken, the House leader had to resign today, and they've got some problems. Last week their finance minister announced he's not running again. So obviously there's a situation there.

I want to move on to something a little more optimistic, and that's the biofuels industry, because we were in Washington yesterday and we were able to see they've done a tremendous job of developing their industry down there.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Chair, point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Point of order, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

We can all be optimistic about the biofuels industry, and we learned some things in Washington, but the fact of the matter is the biofuels industry has nothing to do with this motion, which basically says that there are loose moneys as a result of the estimates we passed right now that are not targeted. They come from the reallocation of the family farm options program. According to the department's written answer to a question that I raised, $246 million has been taken out of that program and not allocated as yet.

The motion is to allocate that money back to the program so that the minister and the government could live up to their word. It has nothing to do with biofuels and ethanol. We're talking about trust and the government here. You can't trust them.

So can he get back to and stay on topic, the family farms options program?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Does this have anything to do, Mr. Anderson—

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Oh, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

--with family farms?

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Absolutely. As Wayne pointed out, we have $246 million that certainly needs to be reallocated, and the commitment has been made to do that.

To my mind, if biofuels is one of the really positive initiatives that we see in this country, we need to understand that maybe the agriculture committee needs to say that we really need a commitment to biofuels, and some of that money could go towards this.

It's important that I lay out the biofuels strategy and some of the help that we'd be giving to that industry, so that we can take a look a bit later and say, well, there's $246 million that the minister has committed to producers, and maybe we need to give him some suggestions about where that should go.

The first thing the minister did was hold a biofuels round table in Ottawa, and he wanted to talk to the industry. He wanted to provide a forum, so that they could come forward with ideas on a national biofuels standard in the industry and its development. He did that; it was an important initiative.

The biggest surprise for most us when we came to power as a government was to find out that nothing had been done on this file, other than the one program to put money out to programs. There were no national standards in place, and there was no national strategy for dealing with biofuels. We were forced to start basically from square one. That's probably the main reason why the minister decided that if so, let's have a biofuel round table and bring people in from across the country. Then we can see what they want and what's important to them.

He then turned around and gave $10 million to the biofuel opportunities for producers initiative to help the business planning and feasibility studies. I suspect that a good number of the members in this room have constituents who have accessed that program. It allowed them to do feasibility studies for biofuel projects with more than one-third producer ownership.

We think that one of the important things is to encourage producer ownership in these plants as much as possible. So $10 million was given to that originally, and then this March another $10 million was given to the program, because there was enough interest in the program that we felt it was important to give extra funding.

Obviously it's important to us, and it's important to producers out there, because they showed tremendous interest in this area and in this field. When we're talking about $246 million, the producers may feel that we put some additional money in an important place.

We committed $145 million to the agricultural bioproducts innovation program, and that's a five-year program, Mr. Chair.

I think this shows that this government is looking forward, and as Mr. Bellevance said, we need a long-term plan. We're trying to plan out further into the future, so that we can establish this industry in a stable fashion.

In this program, $145 million was designed to promote research, development, technology transfer, and the commercialization of agricultural by-products, including biofuels for our country of Canada. We think it's going to benefit farmers. It's going to generate new agricultural knowledge and technology, and facilitate that transfer to those who can then commercialize those innovations.

Again we heard yesterday of the importance of this. Over the past 25 to 30 years the United States, as they developed the biofuels industry, they saw new technologies come in several different times. Even as we are sitting at this time, there are some new technologies coming forward, and we would expect that these would come into play in the new plants.

We heard yesterday that there are 116 plants already operating in the United States, and 81 more coming on stream within the next 18 months. They've made a tremendous commitment. At the office we visited, they had pictures up on the walls of many of the plants that have been set up. They're excited about this, and I think it's something that Canadian producers are excited about as well.

We also chose to announce a $200-million program to increase renewable fuel capacity, by trying to get agricultural producers involved in the construction and expansion of the industry. It's called the eco-agriculture biofuels capital initiative; ecoABC is the acronym. This is the first program that we've had where farmers have a chance to get some help with capital and the development of the construction or the expansion of these biofuels facilities. That is a great initiative. It's expected to increase capacity by up to 1.5 billion litres, if we can get producers involved in the initiative.

Biofuels in my part of the world is a big thing. I think that most of the people at this table have seen its importance. There's obviously a discussion over ethanol and biodiesel, concerning which would be the fit in particular areas across this country. But clearly it's going to develop, and we need to be part of that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a point of order.

Do we have a strategy for avian bird flu at this time that he might explain to us?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

That's not a point of order.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

No?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Science and innovation obviously is one thing that's important to government as well. It's one of the pillars of the APF. It's something we've been discussing lately. It's something this government actually feels is important also.

We have committed another $6.5 million under 15 projects under the ACAAF programs that have been in place; $3.2 million has been committed to Pulse Canada, an innovation project that they came and thought was a good project. The funding is going towards trying to develop new markets. That's something that we think is important, new markets for pulse crops such as lentils, beans, peas, and chickpeas.

We heard also in the United States that one of the focuses of their new farm bill is going to be putting money into specialty crops, and a lot of that money will likely go towards research and innovation in speciality crops, including horticulture. That's an important thing for us. If we're going to compete on an even footing with other countries, we need to have some ability to market our crops. We've put money towards this project in order to develop new markets.

There are a lot of high-value North American markets out there that we need to try to find and to develop. So that's what this is focused on. I guess the ultimate goal, of course, is that in the end producers are going to be able to have higher returns for their farm-produced products.

I think it was also clear that we needed to develop a new direction and strategy for science and innovation. So the minister has been aggressive in that area, in trying to present a new strategy for agriculture science and innovation that will focus on maximizing research opportunities. Several of us have research stations in our ridings, and we understand the importance of research.

I had a chance, actually, to talk to Dr. Fortin a couple of weeks ago. He said that he had been out in Swift Current, which is where we have a research station. He said he was amazed. They have a hall of fame up there, Mr. Chair, where they have pictures of the researchers over the years, but they also have displays of the different varieties of wheat that have been developed in that research station.

It's interesting, because it's almost a history of wheat development, particularly in western Canada. You can go along, and those of us who have farmed, you can—

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Can you slow down? I'm having trouble taking notes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I will try to slow down for you, Charlie.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

And in consideration of our fine interpreters.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Exactly.

Anyway, I just get excited when I talk about the Semiarid Research Station in Swift Current, because it has had a tremendous history over the years of developing varieties and products that have made a huge difference for western Canadian producers in particular.

If you were reading the news about three weeks ago, you would have seen that AC Barrie, which is one of the varieties that was developed in Swift Current, is up for an award for being one of the most influential varieties that has been developed.

Every one of us here, I think, would agree that the science and research opportunities are extremely important. We want to try to build relationships between government and the private sector and academics in order to try to support a profitable agriculture sector and agrifood sector.

To do that, we've invested $22.1 million in 230 research projects across this country that are going to bring some of that forward. It's important that they're right across the country, of course. My area.... I'll just talk a little bit about Saskatchewan, because I'm sure people are familiar with the projects in their own areas. There was $3.7 million given to 27 projects that will be developed in Saskatchewan, dealing with various research projects. So that's a program that has been available across the country, in each of the research areas that we find to be important.

We've also given $2 million to the National Research Council for nutrisciences and health, biosources research, and that's a capital contribution towards developing a national council institute. Actually that's in Wayne's part of the world, on the University of Prince Edward Island campus, another important initiative to show that this government is reaching out to producers and researchers across the entire country.

We've created 17 new scientific professional positions. Half of them will focus on new science, supporting new opportunities and new markets.

We have a $134-million agri-opportunities program, which is a five-year program that provides funds to try to accelerate commercialization of new agricultural products and services. This is an important thing. When you travel around the world, you know the importance of each country being able to promote its own products. Canada is no exception to that. We have begun to do that. We need to focus on that, of course, in order to brand our products as the safe and healthy food products that they are, so that we can then compete and sell our products around the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

May I interrupt? The time scheduled for the agenda has expired. If everybody's okay, I'll adjourn the meeting.