Agriculture Committee on June 8th, 2006

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, André Bellavance]

Mr. Atamanenko, you have seven minutes.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Thank you very much.

I would like to bring this down to the level of the individual farmer, to see specifically how this affects a person. You mentioned initially, Mr. Hepworth, the data package, data requirements specific.... I'm wondering what you are saying here with respect to Mr. X who is farming in Manitoba or Saskatchewan. What should there be to make his life easier?

That's my first question. Maybe I'll let you answer that.

[Lorne Hepworth]

Standing back a bit to look at that individual farmer, we need to be competitive, and it's increasingly competitive out there. There are two issues for him. One is the technology gap—some other farmers, particularly in the U.S., have products we don't have here, and that's more or less the case with the horticultural council list—and how we can address it. There's a structure there now to be put in place. Part of it is that, whether we like it or not, it's sometimes a very small market here, and so there's the cost of getting the product registered and how we can manage through it.

So that's one goal for the farmer: I want to get the same products my competitors have. The second part is—and this is very much, I think, a tribute to the innovation of Canadian farmers—they also want the newer, safer, better products, these reduced-risk ones, because they want to be able to produce food and the other products of agriculture in a very sustainable fashion.

That speaks to the new innovations. In some instances those may be to make sure they have a full armamentarium to deal with these clever pests that keep mutating, etc. So they need to have the newest innovations as well.

If I'm a farmer—I think I can put myself in that category—I want to make sure I have everything that's available to my competitors out there, but more than ever I think the big push is to make sure the innovation and the research are going on, so that I'm going to have the newer, better, safer products into the future.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Obviously there's been an improvement—that's the impression I'm getting—over the last ten years or so.

By having better access to these new products, how much in savings could a farmer...? Maybe, Mr. Bartley, you can give me an idea. In your operation, you're spending so much on chemicals: how much of a savings could you expect if we really made the system work well? Just give a rough idea.

[Bob Bartley]

That's a hard question to answer, because I don't know what the cost is across the line, what it would cost to bring it into Canada. I can tell you that I spend $50,000 to $60,000 a year on pesticides on 1,200 acres.

So the most important thing is that we are competitive with our neighbours, and with the subsidy program in the United States it's coming in at a lower price than we can produce. It costs us more to produce it, so we need the newest chemical. It may be cheaper and crop tolerance may be better, so it doesn't injure the crop as much. We need every advantage we can possibly get to survive, because they have that advantage.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Also, I think you mentioned the maximum residue levels, for example, and this is the same example I used when I was talking about the fruit growers earlier. There are products grown in the United States on which they can use certain pesticides, yet we're competing with these people and can't use the same pesticides here.

I understand how this relates to the apple industry, because we import a lot of apples. Which products in the grains and oils sectors does that cover? I thought most of our produce is either consumed domestically or exported. Are we competing with import grains or pulse crops that use these chemicals?

[Christine Moran]

There would be some chemicals. Certainly we can look at a number of them, which are available in the United States. I think that speaks to improving the timelines and also to improving our access to some of the generic products used there. With our integrated market, we are constantly consuming food back and forth over the border, for value-added processing, for consumption, etc. So it is certainly a concern to us that incoming products are using products we would like.

As my colleague Bob noted, it's a question of levelling that playing field. We are up against so much in terms of competing with our U.S. neighbours, and we do need to ensure we have access.

Quite frankly, it's very difficult for us to pinpoint a savings on a theoretical basis, because sometimes the savings is actually in the form of a higher yield or a better crop, etc. That's difficult for us to measure.

May I make a specific comment on the MRL issue? We referred to the global MRLs, for example, in global cooperation. I think it's important to note that there's regulatory cooperation to be done, not just in the area of synchronicity or harmonization, but also in terms of accepting and finding a science basis for those MRLs. From our perspective, 80% of Canadian grains are exported. So those MRL issues do touch us on a daily basis, and our farmers are extremely savvy in terms of which products they can use for which destination markets. They need to control that very closely.

So we need to ensure that those MRLs are not posing additional barriers to our products in the form of non-tariff barriers. We already have such an uphill climb on the tariff barriers, which we continue to strive to reduce. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, we still need to ensure that we are not faced with non-tariff barriers in the form of MRLs.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

So which products specifically come—

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, André Bellavance]

There's no time left, Mr. Atamanenko. As a matter of fact, we only have five minutes left and that will not be enough for a full round. However, if my colleagues have very short questions, I might accept a few.

Mr. Gourde, do you have a question?

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

We hear lots of talk about harmonizing pesticides regulations. Some farmers in my riding say that the price of pesticides has not come down despite the increase in value of the Canadian dollar. If I remember correctly, 10 litres of pesticides cost $115 three years ago and should cost $80 to $85 today but the price is $125. Considering the increase in value of the Canadian dollar, farmers are wondering why the price of pesticides has not come down.

[Christine Moran]

That's a question I can't answer. Our producers are also worried about that. It's a matter of economics and I have no answer.

[Lorne Hepworth]

As a trade association, the issue of pesticide prices or how our members market them, as you might suspect, is not an area we engage in, nor do we want to, but we must be seen to be making sure that we are not offside with any competition law.

That said, there are studies done on a regular basis by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. I think Ridgetown College, for example, collaborates with the USDA. In any given year, there are pricing studies out in the marketplace relative to pesticides as well as other inputs.

My experience over the years, reading those studies, is that in any given year you will find that there are some pesticides in the U.S. that are cheaper and some in Canada that are cheaper. Obviously, in that timeframe you will have fluctuations up and down.

The observation you made now I can't corroborate, because we ourselves don't track them, but others might make the reverse observation. When the Canadian dollar was really, really low and manufacturers were buying active ingredients with a really devalued dollar, many could make the observation, perhaps, that during that time there was no increase in pesticide prices.

What I'm trying to come to is that there are a number of factors, including the types of pesticides that our growers want to use in terms of the sophisticated approach they tend to take, and I think some of the studies have shown that for certain Manitoba growers versus their counterparts right across the border.

It's a complex issue, not one that trade associations typically engage themselves in, but it gets back to some of the comments that were made earlier by our colleagues and ourselves. At the end of the day, what we're talking about here is that with harmonization a lot of these issues go away.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, André Bellavance]

I want to thank you for your presence in front of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

I'll give the Chair back to Mr. Ritz who probably has some information to give to the members of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Thanks, André.

Just before we adjourn for the day, folks, there is a little bit of a housekeeping issue.

The other day when Rothsay was here, they invited the committee to join in the tour of their new plant in Montreal on, I believe, July 20. We do have a committee meeting that morning, but it's possible we could apply for a travel budget and charter a bus or something, and everybody could head over and do the tour and come back later that afternoon or evening, if there's interest from the committee to do that. I just want to put that before you.

Did I say July? Sorry, I'm thinking summer here. I should have said June 20. Thank you, Alex.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I have no problem sending the committee wherever.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Thanks, Roger, but we will come back; that's the trick.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Chairman, would it be a whole-day trip?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

No, actually we wouldn't. We do have a committee meeting slated for Tuesday, June 20, that will finish at 11 o'clock. It's an hour and a half to Montreal. I'm not sure how much farther the venue is. I really don't know. We'd have to do the logistics of it. But we would get there mid-afternoon, do the tour, and then travel back and be home that evening, unless there are votes or some such thing, which there could be on the Tuesday.

I don't know. I didn't want to have someone come up later and ask why we didn't do that.

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

Mr. Chair, it may be possible to leave early in the morning and get back by mid-afternoon or early afternoon or something.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Well, we have a committee meeting slated for June 20, at this point, do we not?

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

We could have it on the bus.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Well, whatever. I'm not even sure what the meeting is that day. I don't have it in front of me.

Oh, the meeting on the 20th is on transportation again.

[Gary Merasty, Liberal, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

A perfect meeting to have on the bus.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerry Ritz]

Good point, Gary.

So we can give that a bit of thought. We'll meet again on Tuesday morning and we can finalize it then. It's getting pretty tight to run a budget by the liaison committee, and so on. I don't think it's even slated to meet. The executive can, but anyway....

Alex.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

If we were going to do this we would have to restructure our schedule for the rest of the session to fit in transportation somehow. I don't think we can do that.