Agriculture Committee on Dec. 13th, 2011

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I know we've heard about this several times, and even today we've talked about some of the red tape issues. Mr. Dhaliwal is not here, but he mentioned something about a check-off box on I believe his CRA tax return. I don't know if that would have any impact or ability to get your payments to you sooner, if in fact you needed to get them. Is that a particular item that you all see as a positive process to help reduce the red tape?

[Jim Gowland]

I'll start off a little bit on the interpretation of that.

Again, on programs and the discussion about being bankable, predictable, and that type of thing, that comes down to not just what you're going to be eligible for, but to whole.... Again, we have the opportunity within agriculture—and fisheries, of course—with cash-based accounting and how that works out. Again, it's nice to have a program such that you know where the timeliness of the money is, where it's going to be coming in or flowing out.

In a situation like AgriStability, you could be going through some pretty harsh years and not have that payment come out until you have a year of high income, and suddenly—wham—you're hit with the double whammy of higher tax liability. From that perspective, I think we need to make sure we design them so that guys can figure it out and do some tax planning around this too.

[Louis Dechaine]

It's like 2004, when we were hit with BSE around home. A lot of farmers could have used the money to survive the cow-calf operation. They lost it when they went out of business. That's when they got their big cheque, and that's not when they needed it.

[Jim Gowland]

I can attest to that too. We had a neighbour with Holstein heifers. Of course, the Holstein heifer market was just a disaster through BSE. He was a young farmer, up and coming, and basically it wiped him out. Two years later he got a great big cheque, but he couldn't get back into the industry again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have about 15 seconds.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thanks a lot. I'll let you have it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Rousseau, five minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair. You've been pretty tight on the clock today, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Well, we are limited due to votes, and if we can get everybody in, it would be good. So let's see what happens.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

My questions are for everyone.

What do you think of the arrival on the market of new players from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and India? Should we take active measures to better market our products so they remain competitive? Is everything based on the productivity of our farms?

I would like to hear from everyone, starting with Mr. Gowland.

[Jim Gowland]

Thank you. It's a good question. It sounds like an international trade committee question.

As an open market producer, all of my commodity is based on international markets. Anywhere we can have discussions on how we better ourselves, how we position ourselves better, and how we sell ourselves better in differentiating our product and getting access into those markets is a good thing. Certainly you know there are sectors that have some issues with that, and that's okay.

I think we have to make sure...that commodity, whether it's 60% or 70% of Canadian production, has to go offshore. We need to be in all of those talks. We have a lot of the population in areas of the world that are trying to better their standard of living. They demand better product. I've had the opportunity to promote and push differentiated product over the years and into a market that's demanding a little bit better. Any time we can move in when there's a consumer demanding that type of stuff, I think we'd better be at the table there to make sure we see what we can do to help them out. I guess I like to be a salesman from the farm right on up.

I'll move on to the other guys.

[Arden Schneckenburger]

There are two things I'd like to add to that. One is that we are establishing a very good traceability process in this country of the products we're producing. I think that will help us. Another one is to put more bodies on the ground in those countries, more embassy staff who are agriculturally trained, to help us sell our products.

The government does a good job in trade missions, but that's a one-off. We need bodies on the ground afterwards to help us sell.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Dechaine.

[Louis Dechaine]

I would pretty well reiterate what these boys said. We need more bodies over there.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Is labelling an issue on this?

[Louis Dechaine]

I don't believe in it. Now that COOL has been struck down, hopefully we don't have to go through that again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have two minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Two minutes. Cool.

My next question is for Mr. Schneckenburger.

Were there enough incentives in the Growing Forward initiative for the marketing of our products, that is to have access to new markets?

We know that with immigration, there are new products on the market and there is demand for new products. Were there enough incentives in the Growing Forward initiative?

[Arden Schneckenburger]

There have been sufficient incentives. I think you can always use more. I agree with you. Just being a base commodity producer in this day and age I don't think can differentiate you in the global marketplace from somebody like the U.S. growing corn. If we can value-add more here, and value-add before we export, it gives jobs here, maybe on-farm jobs, etc. That's why I would like to see more money put into Growing Forward 2 and in innovation, research, that kind of thing.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

What about you, Mr. Gowland?

[Jim Gowland]

Yes, I think that over the last number of years some new incentives have come through Growing Forward, especially in the area of research and innovation. We always ask, “Is it enough?” No, it's never enough. It's a situation where I think we recognize that there are monetary and economic issues.

But I think the whole transition here that we're seeing and that I think is a really major positive.... It doesn't matter whether it's in grains and oilseeds, the red meat sector, or the supply-managed sector. It doesn't matter where it is: the fact of the matter is that we are making it market driven.

It's great that we've had good scientists over the years who have been able to develop things, to put them out there, and to see if they will work. Sometimes that's okay, too, because you pick up on stuff that sometimes wouldn't have been invented or whatever. But I think it's more consumer reactive: we drive that back up through the whole process. You get industry. You get all aspects of industry. You start to have that market-driven aspect. I think it's good. I think we need to expand upon it within Growing Forward 2 as we move forward. Again, as I mentioned in my remarks, the fact is that I think that's where the huge emphasis is for success for the Canadian agriculture industry.

I look at myself. I've been in it 30-some years now. This is crop number 35 going in. I'm starting to look at the exit ramp, and the next generation is coming on here. We need to have stuff in place here to make sure these guys and gals are going to be competitive. I say “gals” because I have two girls who are very active in the agriculture business.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

That's great.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

I'll now move to Mr. Zimmer for five minutes.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for coming.

First of all, I want to ask Jim a question.

It seems that you've given us an example. You're a practical kind of guy and it's good to have just regular farmers here speaking to us. But in terms of that, you brought up AgriInvest and forget the rest. You did explain that a little to some of the other questioners here, but I would like you to explain what you meant and give us a bit more of an explanation. Validate AgriInvest a little bit more for us, I guess, and maybe explain, too, why you think some of the other ones can go.

[Jim Gowland]

I guess I look at it—and certainly the AgriInvest—coming from the policy area of looking at programs as whole-farm programs. That's a transition we've seen over the years. I've been through a lot of years, with some payments back in the eighties and those types of things, which were very ad hoc in nature. Some of them were commodity-specific and sector-specific programs. I think it's positive that we've moved into a situation of whole-farm types of programs.

Again, I keep coming back to the whole bankable and predictable aspect. You know how much money you're going to put in there, and yes, there's some tweaking you have to do. Again, I keep coming back to this: we are managing our own business. It's an opportunity that.... We still have a government that supports agriculture and is putting money into it, but let's do it in a whole-farm aspect so that it doesn't become distorting for commodity production. I think we have to always be careful about saying, “Which commodity is going to make me more money because of the program payment?” We've seen that happen in other countries too. That causes some issues and some grief as well.

I like to think that I tend to run my operation certainly by segments, but again, it's as a whole farm at the end of the day that it pays the bills, and I would like to see that we still maintain that whole farm. It doesn't matter whether you're a $100,000 producer or a $5 million or $6 million producer; the rules are the same and you have the same opportunities. I think it's a very fair way of doing the division of the pie of that privileged amount of money. I know there are arguments that we should have more sometimes—and that would be great—but you have to divide the pie fairly.