Evidence of meeting #2 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here today.
I want to talk a little about the new Market Access Secretariat and get a feel for how you see that being used most effectively in the future as one of our tools for helping our producers better market their products and make a living in the global marketplace.
In the past little while we've seen the reaching of several different agreements in principle and memorandums of understanding, which I think will have the great potential to really expand our markets for our products, and quite significantly in some cases. I want to get the sense from you, because I really think these alternatives and these options will make a really big difference for the bottom line for many of our farm families in Canada. I'm wondering if you can explain how the creation of this Market Access Secretariat will be used by our government to build on the recent successes that we've seen in gaining access in different overseas markets such as India and Hong Kong. Because certainly we need to try to reduce our dependence on the United States as a market. We need to open up new access. So obviously I'm curious to hear how you would specifically see this Market Access Secretariat used as a tool to expand our access in this and some other very promising markets.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
As you pointed out, the market-access secretariat was identified in the budget. It continues to be shaped through working with industry and our provincial counterparts. We had a great discussion about that yesterday around the federal-provincial table.
The whole idea of this secretariat came out of industry. They said there's not enough emphasis on agriculture when it comes to the free trade agreements we are in the process of signing and that we have signed with these other countries. They said that agriculture, as the third-largest contributor to our economy, seems to be wanting when it comes to market access. It's a way to streamline our efforts, to focus industry in on certain things.
I know we worked very hard to lower the tariff on canola into India some time ago, and we were successful. But then the Canola Council said they didn't have the expertise or the money to get over there and get it done.
This will help to foster those types of agreements. In sales you strike when the iron is hot. If you're not the first one there, someone else is. Australia is very big in that Pacific Rim marketplace, and so are the Americans. We have to get in there and do it. We need a focused resource to make that happen.
In the trips I've made in partnership with industry, it's the government-to-government leveling the playing field, making sure the regulations are not prohibitive.... Then industry coming in and signing up those deals is the knockout punch. We've had tremendous success by working together. It's an unbeatable combination. Once we get the regulatory burdens addressed, industry can go in and sell that Canadian product. And it's not a hard sell, at all.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Thank you, Minister. I'm really excited about the opportunity this will provide for Canadian farmers to open up access to the markets. You've certainly answered my question very well.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
We've got a few seconds left. Unless you've got something else, we'll move on.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, as you know, my background is farming, and I used to be on this committee, so I know the importance of our industry.
As many Canadians know, we lost 20 lives over the last year to listeriosis. We've seen documents from the Treasury Board that show your government could have reallocated funds. It was also alluded to here that Ms. Weatherill is doing an investigation. There are some concerns about transparency and whether she has sufficient tools. Our committee is going to be looking into that later.
I have two questions that came out of two media reports today. It's about the U.S. auditors inspecting our plants. They're pretty rough reports.
First, are you aware of the findings of these U.S. auditors in the plants and the many breaches of regulations that they found? Second, why do we have U.S. auditors coming here to inspect our plants? Don't we have in-house resources? Aren't we astute enough and don't we have the tools here to deal with it on our own?
Those are my two questions. You can go ahead.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Thanks, Mark.
Certainly it was a pleasure for us to deliver AgriStability and AgriRecovery on behalf of Cape Breton farmers when they had some flood problems this year. I know you were instrumental in making sure that someone got credit for that, and I thank you.
As to the document you allude to, I can only reinforce that there were no cuts done or proposed, now or in the future. Absolutely none. If anything, we have added moneys to the budget of CFIA. I could have Carole outline that, but we only have a few more minutes. Of course as I said, we've hired 200-plus inspectors since 2006, and we continue to do that.
As to audits by other countries, the U.S. is not alone in doing that. They audit ours; we audit theirs. A lot of our reports are just as scathing. The Russians audit. The Japanese audit. Any of our import countries audit. That's the reciprocal agreement we have as we strike to get equivalency in the science-based rules that are required for food safety. We take these reports very seriously. We analyze them. We work with them. We correct any deficiencies that are outlined, as the Americans do when we check out their plants.
A lot of this will be addressed when we start looking at a better traceability system--right back to the farm gate. We're working on that. Provinces like Quebec have a great system now. Alberta is funding a system to get up to that. Manitoba has made that announcement. That's part and parcel of what our import nations have asked for.
Certainly we look at these reports that are constantly being done. We analyze every one, and we seek to address whatever they are pointing out.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
With all due respect, Minister, did you see the report? It's pretty bad. It says here: “...the Americans found the vast majority (20 of 25) of meat processing plants they visited had some safety requirements that were not adequately enforced...”. And I could go through the whole list here of things that were not done.
And of course they come out with a thing that says most of it's the workload of inspectors, where they should have two or three plants at the most and the pressure is on them to do sometimes four plants.
Do you know the report inside out? Doesn't it raise an alarm bell for you? You used to be on this committee with me, and if you'd seen this report you'd be dancing over there. So I'm wondering, now that you're sitting in that chair and you see this report, doesn't it really disturb you and raise some alarm bells within you and your department?
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Well, certainly we see these reports, Mark, and we continue to address the issues on a case-by-case basis. Certainly I'll have that debate with anybody on sound science and so forth.
Carole, if you wanted to expand on that particular report, please do.
11:45 a.m.
Carole Swan President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
Thanks, Minister. Sure.
As the minister has said, we have a system where, in order to export, countries come and look at our establishments. And it is reciprocal; we go and look at theirs. Deficiencies are found. Some of them are quite minor. For the more significant ones, action is taken immediately. It's a concern to us, as well as the Americans.
We have a similar situation when we audit the U.S., in fact. Deficiencies are found and they're corrected. And if they're not corrected, plants are not allowed to operate.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
It seems as if the Americans have a different system now for tracking when a disease happens or when somebody gets an illness. We always thought on this side that we had the best system in the world, the healthiest and the safest food, and now we're finding out that we have to take maybe more directive from the Americans.
Are you aware of their system, and do you think we should implement some of the changes they have?
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Oh, absolutely, Mark. We constantly analyze everybody else's systems around the world. If they've got an idea that's better than ours, we'll strive to put that in place. But having said that, the Japanese are some of the most strident food inspectors in the world, and they come to Canada again and again to copy our system.
You know, we've never claimed to have it all right. No one can. There's no way you can inspect yourself out of any potential situation. But you certainly strive to limit the potential possibility of that. And when the Japanese come, they mimic our system. When I was in India, they talked about coming over and looking at what we've done. Our system is globally accepted, globally known, and is among the highest in the world.
Certainly the Americans do things differently, but there is an equivalency in the system overall.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Minister, for coming today and being part of the committee presentation.
I think we realize in Canada—we've had those discussions about the economy, and agriculture cannot be exempt from some of the situations that are happening, not just in Canada, but across the globe. In fact, I think if you were to measure across Canada in comparison to the world, as much as we have issues, we need to be thankful for being in Canada, for the most part.
Minister, during the budget we talked about the farm improvement and marketing cooperatives loans. One of the things that has been brought up, I think by all members, quite honestly, is being able to get young farmers and being able to help new farmers get going. I'm wondering if you could expand a little bit on the legislative changes that have come about in the new farm improvement co-op loans.
Secondly, I'd like you to expand a little bit on the agriculture flexibility. I mean the AgriFlex brought out by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture as their focal point. You touched a little bit at your meetings on the $50 million that had been supported and important for marketing, and I think we've actually heard from others today how significant being able to expand Canada's markets is for our producers. I'm wondering if you might just expand a little bit on the ways in which the agri-flexibility will give farmers some future endeavours.
And then if I have some time, I'd like to just follow up a little bit on some of the discussion around the research.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Thank you, Bev. Those are good questions.
Of course, in the budget there was a lot more for agriculture than just what was under the agricultural headline. There was broadband Internet for those farmers outside the Canadian Wheat Board who access their markets and sell into them on their own. There was infrastructure. Of course, you can't haul load after load to market over bad roads and not destroy your truck. From the tax standpoint, of course, farmers are small-businessmen as well, so changes we saw in the tax rates--they can now earn another $100,000 and stay within the small-business tax framework--are very beneficial to farmers; they keep them building their economy. Access to credit is exceptionally important. We've done that with additions to EDC, the Export Development Corporation, which large processors and so forth use to backstop. Of course this has made their marketplace more accessible to farmers.
As you rightly point out, with changes to FIMCLA, the farm income marketing system.... With the average age of farmers across this country approaching retirement age--60-plus--we have to start getting our heads around the idea that it's the new and beginning farmers who need to come in to take over. The only way we can drive that is with black ink on the bottom line. The ledger has to be profitable. We're seeing those changes coming as new farmers come in and look at new ways to do things.
Agricultural flexibility in partnership with FIMCLA will allow us to do that. Of course, it's very tough to get credit when you're beginning a new business--it just is--and agriculture is no exception to that. We're making $25 million available to new farmers over five years through FIMCLA to make sure they have access to that, to lever that money and get involved with farm credit. We have some great programs for new farmers as well.
AgriFlex we will build on. We need a proactive pillar, as I outlined in my opening remarks. We do have a good solid business-risk set of pillars, even for new farmers, with the averages we allow them to take automatically and with negative margins being covered, and so forth. Even if they have a bad couple of years off the hop, it's not going to take them down.
AgriFlex allows us to build on that with commercialization of new ideas. New technologies that are out there will lower the cost of inputs. There are new fertilizers coming on board. There are new generics out there. This department has been very solid in funding the background checks on chemicals and pesticides going to PMRA. We've done the work and handed them the package and said, here, get this done, because it's in the best interests of our horticulture industry and our grains industry. We've had some success with that. We're doing the same type of thing with veterinary drugs, again under Health Canada. Those types of things need to be available to our farmers so that the playing field is as level as we can make it. Being able to fund those types of things under a proactive program like agricultural flexibility benefits everybody.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
I have a quick one on research.
In my riding, I have some local farmers. We're often critical about family farms that grow and get large. I can take you to a couple in my area that, actually, if they weren't large wouldn't have been able to help. They are working closely not only with the consumer groups but with municipalities and with universities in terms of being able to develop biofuel, develop different alternative energy sources, and actually develop multiple uses of the manure that the livestock produce.
I think it really has to be recognized that this is the type of thing that's going to help carry forward the sustainability of agriculture in the future, not only for the livestock producer but also for the grain producer. I'm just wondering if you can emphasize a little bit about the future and sustainability of agriculture, and how those research dollars we've put in would help.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
There are a number of programs to address that, and you're right to point them out. The budget allocated $250 million for labs at the federal level, which are certainly well needed. It's hard to get scientists to work in an environment where the ceiling's literally falling down around their ears. We're working on that in concert with universities, provincial governments, and of course industry itself to get that job done. I look forward to much more research being done at the Canadian level to keep it in the public purview as opposed to always being done by the private sector as we've seen before.
I think the long-term solution to agriculture will be.... Our studies are showing us that the larger, more diversified operators are the ones who have a good bottom line at this point, and they are rewarded in that because they integrate their system.
You and I have both been on dairies where they've put in a system for the recapture of methane off the pond out back, and that's a tremendous opportunity. In the case of bio-digesters, we have a feedlot just outside of Vegreville in Alberta that has gone to the point where they are now recapturing every bit of the energy off the byproducts--the manure and dead stock and so on--and they are supplying enough power to run their 50,000-head feedlot plus feed back into the Alberta transmission lines and create extra dollars generated from that. That's a tremendous opportunity. That's the type of thing for which we have to get beyond the thought process.
We took some unnecessary hits on our biofuel strategy because a lot of people were hollering and baying at the moon that you can't have a food and fuel supply. Certainly we can. With the innovation and industriousness of our producers, they can go beyond the straight food supply. We can contribute to both and allow farmers to make that extra money.
Canadians enjoy the cheapest, safest-quality food, when you look at how 10% of their disposable income goes to feeding themselves. They spend more money on their vehicle, or their boat, or their cottage than they do on feeding themselves. We have to get that turned around. It's part of the education that governments need to do. Canadians demand safe, secure food. They have it in spades. We'll continue to deliver that and help farmers do other things that will return a buck to the farm gate.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
