Agriculture Committee on Nov. 4th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Mr. Hoback.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Again, through the chair, of course we need guidelines for the officials and administrators of the program on what they can or can't do. If you don't have guidelines, then they think anybody can do anything. It's the wild, wild west.

The reality is these are accurate guidelines. It takes taxpayers' interests into account. It still provides the requirements that farmers actually do require. Again, if there's something in the future that could suggest it should change, they have the ability and the flexibility to make those changes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you, Mr. Hoback.

We have amendment Liberal-3.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

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

Sorry, Chair. How many were in favour of this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I just had two hands.

(Clause 133 agreed to)

Clauses 134 and 135 have no amendments, so can we take those and approve those as 134 and 135?

(Clauses 134 and 135 agreed to)

(On clause 136)

We'll move now to clause 136, and we have amendment G-5. I would ask Mr. Lemieux, please, to speak.

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

Thanks, Chair.

I'm happy to move amendment G-5. Again, it's quite lengthy, so I'm not going to read it. What I will do is just try to explain it in plain English.

This amendment is basically talking about how the crown can recover amounts owed to it under the program. The amendment actually clarifies provisions pertaining to a limitation period. There's a limitation period, and this adds more legislative precision regarding the minister's ability to manage default files. It's primarily dealing with default situations.

To give you an example, the amendment clarifies that there's a six-year limitation in place, and the amendment clarifies that the six-year limitation period restarts upon the producer's acknowledgement of the debt, and describes what constitutes an acknowledgement. In other words, there's a default situation that occurs, and that could start the clock ticking on six years. However, if some point after that the farmer or the producer acknowledges they have a debt—there are certain provisions which form what that means “to acknowledge”, and that is contained in here as well—then the clock starts again, so the first six years won't expire when he acknowledges it at the three-year mark, for example.

These provisions are consistent with other statutes, and in fact the wording here has been drawn from the Canada Student Loans Act, so it's something that's been seen before.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you.

Mr. Allen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Let me look to my friends down at the end. I'm not sure who is going to take on the question, but let's leave it open to whomever. This is a significant amendment. It may be boiled down to two sentences as to why it was needed, but we're looking at a significant amount of wordage and sections in a government bill, so if I could have some clarification.... Not that I don't believe Mr. Lemieux, he started out well. To be truthful, he did, with a kind of plain language, and then it got slightly convoluted, it seemed, and the Canada Student Loans Act got thrown in for good measure.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, Oh!

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Some of us used to have student loans. Mine was paid off a long time ago, so I'm not really sure where that one was going.

If I could, I'm not sure, Mr. Lloyd, whether you're going to be the designated spokesperson, but I did tip you off in advance that I wanted to talk about this one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Mr. Lloyd, do you want to take this on?

[Rosser Lloyd]

Again, I'll come back to what the advance payments program does. We do two things. We guarantee the repayment of the advances, and we pay the interest on the first $100,000. If we go through the year and the producer fails to repay, we go in and pay the bank that gave the money in the first place. We pay on the producer's behalf. The debt becomes a debt due to the crown and we take collection action going forward from there.

In the current legislation, there is a limitation period of six years. We saw an opportunity to provide greater clarity around how that six-year limitation really works and what our ability is beyond that. To do that, we relied on other pieces of legislation. This is where the Canada student loans come in as a model upon which to build what you have here in front of you.

Yes, there are a lot of paragraphs, but the principle is fairly simple. It says that once you acknowledge a debt, the clock starts ticking again on the six years. You go in, you make a payment of whatever, you acknowledge the fact that you owe that money, and the clock starts ticking again on the six years.

The subsequent paragraphs say what constitutes an acknowledgement of that debt. Should it be a payment, a written acknowledgement that you owe the money, or a performance of an obligation under the security agreement? We have a number of provisions under this—and if you wish, I can let Sara go through each one of them—that state, “Okay, if I take this action, it's actually an acknowledgement of debt, and it actually starts the clock ticking again.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Go ahead, please.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I have an additional question. What would actually constitute a limitation?

[Sara Guild, Acting Manager and Senior Counsel, Agriculture and Food Inspection Legal Services, Department of Justice]

The period is six years, if that's what you mean.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Exactly.

[Sara Guild]

It's six years today, before this bill, and when this is passed, it's still going to be six years. A lot of different schemes have this type of codifying common law principles or Quebec civil law principles that give a kind of consistency in the application. The limitation period isn't changing in terms of the length. It's still six years, but now you have clarity and more legislative precision in terms of the rules that surround collection of a debt in terms of acknowledgements and limitation periods.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

If I'm hearing you correctly, the limitation period is six years. If I can use a stopwatch analogy, the issue becomes when do you actually start that clock. Is that what we're really trying to drive at? This gives it a specific period, such that we say “this is when it starts”, whereas before, there may have been a place where there might have been confusion as to when it started. Or am I just headed somewhere wrong here?

[Rosser Lloyd]

You're right on, but I would add the fact that it starts and restarts. When there's an acknowledgement of the debt, you click the stopwatch again and it restarts again.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

It's like me running the 100 yards these days. I sort of ran the first 35 and then walked the last 65, so you restart the clock on me since I'm never making the sub-10-seconds—maybe the sub-10-minutes. That's fair enough. I appreciate that. That actually was a heck of a lot simpler than what you wrote. Understanding that law societies get paid by the word, I get that. It would have been much simpler if you could have written it that way, but I recognize that legislation can't be written this way.

Thanks to both of you for that clarification.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Mr. Allen, is there anything further?

All those in favour of amendment G-5?

(Amendment agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

(Clause 136 as amended agreed to)

Clauses 137 through 153 do not have any amendments, so I'd ask if we could approve those clauses.

(Clauses 137 to 153 inclusive agreed to)

Thank you very much, colleagues.

We're wrapping up towards the end. That takes to us to clause 153.1. I would ask Madam Brosseau, please, to present it.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm moving:

That Bill C-18 be amended by adding after line 6 on page 101 the following new clause: REVIEW AND REPORT 153.1 (1) Five years after the day on which this Act is assented to, and every five years after that, the Minister must cause an independent review of the provisions and operation of this Act to be undertaken. (2) The Minister must cause a report of the review to be laid before each House of Parliament on any of the first 15 days on which that House is sitting after the report has been completed.

The intent of this amendment is to make sure that we have a chance to review this piece of legislation every five years and that parliamentarians are kept informed of the conclusions of the review, because this is a very important act. We know from testimony we heard at committee, and because we have been studying this for about a year now, we know that this is very important. A lot of this will be decided and rolled out in regulations, so that's why we think it is important to have a review in five years, simply to ensure that farmers' interests are being taken into consideration.

That's about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you, Madam Brosseau.

I'll go to Mr. Eyking first.

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

When we talk about this much legislation and how much this affects farmers, I think it makes sense that it should be reviewed every five years. It sounds like one of those amendments that the government would have a hard time voting against.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Mr. Lemieux.