Agriculture Committee on March 10th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

You're out of time.

Mr. Payne, for five minutes, please.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I thank the witnesses for coming today on our study on internal trade within Canada. We know there are certainly some difficulties.

In my riding I have one of the biggest beef plants in Alberta, JBS in Brooks. I know they have to meet federal standards and obviously export standards.

I'm not sure, Mr. Kyte, if there are any barriers for them to move their product across Canada. I don't believe there is, but I just wanted to verify that.

[Christopher Kyte]

No.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

You talked about some of the other issues we have had. One of the things you also talked about was, I believe, the pizzas—40%. Of course, the funding they get is through the Farm Bill in the U.S. That's correct. They are able to subsidize that whereas we have our board, and I think all members basically support that process. That does make, obviously, some issues for some of your organizations.

I also wanted to touch base on your suggestion in your comments that provinces should invest in companies to meet international standards if they believe those companies can be competitive.

Are you aware of any of these companies that you would suggest provinces should invest in, and which provinces? I wonder if, in fact, you have that kind of information.

[Christopher Kyte]

From time to time, we're told that a company doesn't like this regulation, doesn't like that regulation, because it's a barrier to their growth. But it's a national standard. We might come back to those companies and say that if they really feel that they're hard done by, then they should do what my people had to do over time, which was to invest in our operation, so that we can compete internationally and interprovincially. Don't lower your standards.

Just on that whole issue of lowering standards, I noticed that there have been some consultations recently. The CFIA is.... I think this is a staff issue where they've said, “Look, we have these standards, so I think we should get rid of them because nobody is using them and they're interprovincial trade barriers or trade barriers.”

I'm thinking I have some problems there, so you might be hearing from me on that front. I'm not a big believer in dropping standards.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

That certainly would not benefit anybody. In Canada we have a good reputation for food safety. Dropping any of those standards I don't believe would be in our best interests or in the best interests of any of the companies.

Mr. White, I want to talk to you about canola. You talked about a couple of things that certainly were interesting, and my colleague, Mr. Dreeshen, talked about neonicotinoids. You said something about, and I didn't quite catch it; is it going to cost Ontario farmers something like $630 million with the new regulations that are coming in?

[Rick White]

Yes, that's an estimate from the Grain Farmers of Ontario. Should they go forward with a neonicotinoid ban in Ontario, it's going to affect corn production and certainly canola production as well. It will either be losses due to infestation of flea beetles, for example, because they won't be able to control them nearly as well with some other products that we're aware of. Yes, that's their estimate of the damage to their incomes basically.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

What would that do to farmers or the canola growers providing investment for new products in Ontario?

[Rick White]

Well, it starts to affect seed developers in terms of genetics. If you can't get your product into Ontario, you have to start asking if we are going to make these products available in other parts of Canada.

It starts to break apart the supply chain. It starts to pit a grower in one region against another at a competitive disadvantage, and growers in that region against our international market competitors as well.

It does have kind of a knock-on effect in investment which affects everybody in Canada eventually.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

You also talked about a permanent tribunal panel and that probably has some good ideas in it. I wonder if you have fleshed that out. My next part of that would be, how do you see us being able to get all the provinces on board to eliminate these internal trade barriers?

[Rick White]

The tribunal concept is to replace a more temporary panel approach that we have right now, so that you can gain expertise within the tribunal. It's up; it's running; it's predictable. In addition to that, the AIT needs more teeth. That's one point I really didn't hammer home.

Through this experience with Ontario and Quebec, we hold our breath that they are going to comply because there are not very substantial monetary penalties in place. It's better than it used to be, but it needs to have more teeth.

When an agreement like the AIT is contravened, there has to be compliance and a mechanism to ensure compliance through the courts. We need that permanency. We need that history. We need it to kind of replicate what's happening at the international trade level, because those systems do work. There are repercussions. There are teeth in those agreements. Our internal barriers should be treated exactly the same in our view.

How you get the provinces onside is a good question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Mr. Allen, for five minutes.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you to both of you for coming.

I would have asked you that, Mr. White, but I'm glad Mr. Payne actually opened up that question.

In your document you talk about a number of things. If the federal regulators say it's x, then everybody should say it's x. This is to follow up on Mr. Payne's idea of how to get the provinces and even municipalities onside since they have jurisdiction.

How do you see that jurisdiction being fixed in a sense of if it's x, everybody should say it's x without some folks just saying, “Well, I don't want x”? How do we work on that piece?

[Rick White]

I guess it's to make sure at the provincial level that they are making their decisions based on sound science, because they will come up with the same decision as you do at the federal level.

The problem at the provincial level is they are avoiding relying on science-based regulatory processes to allow commerce and products to be developed and used in this country. I think it's a question of how to get the provinces onside to maintain that science-based regulatory approach, which has been so valuable to Canada at the federal level, and it continues to serve us well. The provinces need to get onside with that. How you twist their arms, I don't know. That's a political question.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

You'll leave that one for us, will you?

[Rick White]

Yes.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

In your comments today—taking out neonic; I'm not actually interested in talking about that; that's a different issue for me—you talked about the issue about cosmetic pesticides. I think I know where you're going to go with that one, but can you help me?

To be truthful, I used to be a municipal politician. I watched folks put pesticides on their lawn, and then turn on the sprinkler and watch it go down the sewer grate. It's not a good place for it to go. We're not talking about farmers with cosmetic pesticides. We're talking about residential folks, who quite frankly don't know how to use half the stuff unless they get it professionally applied. We have combined storm and sanitary sewers in lots of older parts of Ontario. You get a flood and that stuff goes directly into the lake and the watershed. A lot of municipalities looked at that piece as to why they were getting rid of it, not because they didn't believe that the science was correct—the stuff was good—but the issue was that it was going in the watershed instead of staying on top of the stuff it was trying to take care of.

Is this part of that supply chain you talked about, that there's a need for that and that's why we should....? I was wondering about the cosmetic use, because to be truthful, it's like cosmetic surgery, right? Some folks may think they really need it, but does anyone really need cosmetic surgery?

[Rick White]

I think on the cosmetic ban issue, it again comes back to what those decisions are being based on. I don't disagree that if you're in a watershed and you get runoff issues with the application of some of these products and it's proven that it's an issue, then maybe in some of those areas you need to do something specific. But an outright ban based on it just being cosmetic and not on anything scientific, if you could scientifically show a runoff problem in a certain area, then that's your science-based decision process there. You might be able to carve out that area. I think it's applied too generally and too broadly, without any basis for it other than to say that we have a little problem here, and therefore we'll take a blanket approach, not based on science, and apply it to a larger area. That's where we see an undermining process starting to happen. We see it as a threat if it's used to any degree and starts to expand, especially into agriculture. That would be a big problem for us.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Okay. I thought you'd talk more about the supply chain in this piece, but I understand what you're saying. There seems to be an erosion of confidence in the sense of what does the science say. I appreciate that. I recognize in the farm industry we do some things that folks who live in urban areas don't quite understand. There are urban decisions made for urban dwellers that really shouldn't be overlaid on the agriculture sector. Let me just state that for the record. It just doesn't make any sense, quite frankly.

The big piece is still a jurisdictional thing. I actually like your idea around a panel that's somewhat permanent in nature for jurisdictional stuff.

Let me ask this question about canola oil specifically. It seems to me this was about a blend of canola oil with a dairy product. The oil itself isn't having a problem moving across boundaries, is it?

[Rick White]

No, it's the inability to get it into Ontario and Quebec because of the milk acts in play. There are labelling issues and on what you can blend with butter and call it butter. There are restrictions on what you can call cheese if it's not made from cream, for example. Those are areas of the market that the consumer should decide whether or not they want to buy it, not a provincial regulation prohibiting those kinds of things from happening. It's holding back innovation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much.

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

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

I have one quick question and then I'll give the rest of my time to Mr. Maguire.

Regarding the neonicotinoids issue, I'm a little cautious when you talk about tribunals, because we already have a system set in place that is supposed to look at this stuff scientifically and say whether it's good or bad. If it's not bad, then it should proceed; if it is bad, then it shouldn't. It's that simple. We already have a system in place that is supposed to do that. I'm a little cautious about any further deepening of red tape. I don't think we need that, but I think we need the groups that are supposed to have oversight to do exactly what they're supposed to do.

I am concerned though about the interprovincial trade part of this when I see municipalities and provinces stepping into the federal fray.

I have a simple little question for you about the neonicotinoids, because we have heard about this issue for a long time. There are a lot of rumours. The fact is that some other jurisdictions around the world are making this rumour not true, but they think it's true. Are there any studies to back up what they're saying about it being harmful to bee populations?

[Rick White]

Again, I can't speak to the integrity of scientific research in other countries.

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

I mean legitimate scientific studies.

[Rick White]

Our experience, for instance, with canola, is that we need pollinators. We would do nothing to take a chance on killing bees. We need bees to pollinate the crop. There's a symbiotic relationship there that we're well aware of and when you look at say, canola, there are millions and millions of acres where canola is coinciding and in harmony with beekeepers. We use neonics on the seed because we have to.

We don't see the problem and we don't see the linkage. Maybe in certain circumstances there are some linkages, but that's not to say there aren't other things like mites or disease or weather or beekeeper skills. There are a whole bunch of other factors that come into bee colony collapse. It's not just about neonics and we haven't drawn a really clear scientific link that we're comfortable with yet.

I think there are some gaps in the science around that, some gaps in the credibility. Again, I don't have anything specific, because I'm not a bug specialist or a neonics specialist, or a scientist for that matter, so I have to trust the scientists when they speak. I look to our Canadian regulators and our Canadian scientists for credible science here for Canada.