Agriculture Committee on April 30th, 2014

[Dr. Bruce Roberts]

As the person who has to try to raise that money from our organizations, that's a wonderful question.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

We have the same challenge. We have to raise the money from taxpayers.

[Dr. Bruce Roberts]

I've been in this job for just under three years now, and it took me quite a while to recognize the difference between the poultry industry and many other commodities, like dairy, for example. In the dairy industry, we're dealing with cows that produce milk. In the poultry industry we're dealing with multiple commodities. What's good for one commodity isn't necessarily good for the other ones, so there's a need for some compromises. Then we have our processors and input suppliers, whom we deal with as well. We get different pulls. We estimate about $2 million a year is available in industry money. This is from the producer side, not from the larger industry.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay.

[Dr. Bruce Roberts]

Consolidating and coordinating that has been one of our major goals. The only complaint we have about the changes over the last couple of years is that it was so fast we didn't have time to react, and we committed our resources.

The other thing about the industry is that the Chicken Farmers of Canada or Egg Farmers of Canada have multiple provincial organizations they have to answer to, so you have another pulling of things.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I'm wondering if you could sort out those priorities yourselves. In fact, I would argue that the industry should sort out their own priorities and not have governments sort it out for them.

[Dr. Bruce Roberts]

They're doing that in the cluster. We designed the cluster, and we like the clusters partially because of that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

We're out of time. Thank you, Mr. Lemieux. The narrative took a while.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

You're welcome, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I want to go to Mr. Garrison, please, for five minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Chair, I can't resist saying that, of course, if the government wants to get that point across, they could use some of the money they're using on their economic action plan to let people know that, instead of expecting the witnesses to come here and praise the program.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

If we did that, you would criticize it.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Put it in the chickens instead of the NHL.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I want to ask a serious question about the relationship between what I would call basic science and research, which can be commercialized. I think both of you made reference to that at different points in your presentation. I think that's part of what we're actually getting at with Mr. Lemieux's question.

What I heard you saying is, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's some research that isn't possible to profit from. It's kind of the basic research and innovation. At some point, that becomes something that can be commercialized with further investment.

I'll start with Mr. Newkirk. Is that what you were saying earlier in your presentation?

[Dr. Rex Newkirk]

Yes, I think what I was trying to say is there are different stages for different parts of investment. Basic research is very important, and government and industry can invest in basic research.

One of the points that I have wanted to raise, and one of my experiences has been that oftentimes there has been a great deal of investment put into basic research at universities, particularly in other research institutes, but sometimes there's a misunderstanding of how far that research needs to go before industry can take it up.

Sometimes we do a very broad swath of many basic research applications, but we only take it a little way up the stairs. I think we would be better off to take those resources, work with industry and others, and I think the science clusters have done this. It's narrowing down on those things that are most commercially relevant, but taking them to a stage that then can be capitalized on by the companies and those that can do that.

I think that basic research is important. It just needs to be focused and taken to a level so that it can then go into the commercial hands more readily. There just needs to be an understanding of where the hand-off occurs.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

On the same question.

[Dr. Bruce Roberts]

I think it's stated by the science and technology branch. Their emphasis is on the longer term, on what we might call basic or blue sky research. We need that. We have to have that. We like to take it once it gets beyond that point, although we do fund some basic research frequently in cooperation with the federal or provincial governments, but our owners are farmers and processors. They're interested in getting this to market as quickly as possible. That's where a lot of that comes from. I really like what we're hearing from the science and technology branch about their emphasizing the long-term stuff, longer term projects, because our projects run anywhere from two to four years, and it's to get it closer to that end user.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I'm going to ask a question that members of the committee have heard me ask others, given the conclusion by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that global warming is going to have a big impact on agriculture and food supplies.

My question is for both of you. I'll start with Mr. Roberts this time. Are your research groups engaged in any of that longer term research to deal with climate mitigation or adaptation?

[Dr. Bruce Roberts]

Yes, we have two projects within the cluster that look at climate change and emissions. Then we've also funded several others. Besides the cluster, we do an annual funding round, and we've done a couple on climate change too. It's becoming certainly more of an issue with some of the extreme weather patterns. We're getting a lot more interest from our members about that.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Newkirk.

[Dr. Rex Newkirk]

I think it's an important issue. It's one we have raised. We have worked with the federal government's agency that looks at changes in weather patterns. We have worked with the industry to say what's going to happen in the future. If the temperature keeps rising as it is, that probably means we either have to start looking at selecting our varieties now for that in the future because it takes seven or eight years for a variety to come to fruition, and so we're trying to give that impetus.

The other one is to look at what products we should be working on. We're already seeing a large amount of corn and soybean come into Manitoba. It's coming into Saskatchewan. Will that continue to expand as climate changes? We need to be aware of that as we're looking at the products we're developing and the markets we're developing. Will there be shifts in those things? Certainly there's a lot of talk about that. It's something that's being discussed and thought about. Certainly the round table discussions include that, as well as what we need to do to be prepared for this.

I'd have to say as well that sustainability has become a very important part of the marketing package for Canada, because of some of the practices we use in reducing some of the greenhouse gases that can be created through agricultural production, and the ability to capture; that's become a significant part of the sell, if you will. Customers are very interested in that. When they come and they see what Canada has to offer and what we're doing in this regard, they see that as attractive, and I think that's something for us to build upon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

We'll now go to Mr. Hoback, for five minutes, please.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Welcome, witnesses.

I have to declare I'm a CIGI alumnus so I'm a little bit biased on some of the work you have done at CIGI in the past for sure.

I definitely want to highlight some of the things you have done, because I think it's important the committee hear that before preparing its report. One of the great things you were doing was working with foreign purchasers of wheat and different commodities, and bringing them into Winnipeg and actually going through what the requirements for dough were, for example, or the mix of different grains to get the right texture for making different types of buns, breads, and pastas.

Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Are you still fairly involved with working with the end user and actually helping them make sure the product we're growing on the Prairies is actually blended and done in such a way that it meets their requirements when it hits the store shelf?

[Dr. Rex Newkirk]

Yes, absolutely. That's our everyday work.

I just came back from spending time with customers in three Asian countries having exactly those discussions. What is it that meets their needs? What are they requiring? There are wishes and needs, so it's really identifying what their needs are—and it's nice to know their wishes—and identifying what we can do to meet those needs. We have an active research program right now. We're looking at different varieties, and how they meet the customers' needs, the growing conditions. We are developing products with these customers looking at the blends they can use.

In the previous session one witness talked about these new classes of wheat that have opened up some opportunities. We're speaking to those customers about the properties of a CPS wheat, for example, and how that can be beneficial to them.

We do that routinely, and we hear a lot of comments back from customers, and we try to drive that out to the industry. Tomorrow, I'll be meeting with the Western Grain Elevator Association. We'll be reporting to them on what the customers are telling us and what it is they are looking for.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

You hear about their wishes, the dreams they have, and what they want to see in a product. Again, we're trying to get it through different types of blending of different products. How do you take that information back to the plant breeders and say that what is needed is a wheat variety that has 14.5% protein, or has a specific starch or bran, or whatever that characteristic or trait would be? How does that information get plugged into the research level? Then how does it get into a process of developing what our customers are asking for?