Agriculture Committee on June 4th, 2012
Evidence of meeting #44 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was bees.
A recording is available from Parliament.
On the agenda
MPs speaking
Also speaking
- Rod Scarlett Executive Director, Canadian Honey Council
- Bill Ferguson Owner, Ferguson Apiaries
- Davis Bryans President, Munro Honey & Munro's Meadery
- David Schuit President, Saugeen Country Honey Inc.
- Hendrika Schuit Member, Saugeen Country Honey Inc.
4:50 p.m.
President, Munro Honey & Munro's Meadery
But once you draw from them, there's nothing left.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
President, Munro Honey & Munro's Meadery
Once you draw from it, there's nothing left for the next year. What happens to the next year?
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
The programs are meant to provide financial assistance to farmers that find themselves in difficult circumstances, due to circumstances that are beyond their control. I'm not saying it's going to fix all of your problems or that it is going to find out exactly why bees are dying. The research will focus on that.
But these types of programs are there to help farmers—
4:50 p.m.
President, Munro Honey & Munro's Meadery
A lot of this research you're talking about has nothing to do with this insecticide poisoning.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I'm sorry, I disagree. I've been reading through the different projects that have been launched. As I say, some of them are for substantial amounts of money, and they are touching on or they are focused on survivability of bees.
4:50 p.m.
President, Munro Honey & Munro's Meadery
And they meant to neonicotinoids?
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Larry Miller
Okay, we're not going to debate this back and forth.
I think to our witnesses, Mr. Lemieux has mentioned some programs and some of them will cover disasters, whether they're tornadoes.... One went through Grey and Bruce county here a couple of summers ago, and that money helped out. It will cover things like flooding or drought. I'm not sure whether this would qualify, but it probably has the potential to qualify under one of those. I think rather than debate it, at least investigate to see if those programs will help in the interim. And I think we need further study into why the bees, themselves, are dying.
Ms. Brosseau, you have five minutes please.
June 4th, 2012 / 4:50 p.m.
NDP
Ruth Ellen Brosseau Berthier—Maskinongé, QC
God bless the Internet and iPads because I did a quick little Google search and I found that on May 25, 2007, the Minister of Agriculture for Canada and the Canadian Wheat Board gave $136,000 to two projects that were supposed to address the unexplained losses of the bee population.
I was just wondering if we could get information to see where those projects or those reports are. That's just an idea.
Mr. Bill Ferguson, if it's possible, could you please table that report to the committee so we could have a chance to read it?
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Larry Miller
That report is 100 pages and in order for it to be tabled before the whole committee, it has to be in both languages.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Larry Miller
That's going to be, I'd just say, impossible to do. I'm sure that online someplace that report is probably available in both languages. Would that be fair or not?
4:50 p.m.
NDP
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Larry Miller
It could be but all I'm saying is that once it comes to the clerk, in order for him to distribute it to all members, it's supposed to be translated, which is a huge cost.
4:50 p.m.
NDP