Agriculture Committee on Dec. 1st, 2020

[Dr. Rene Van Acker]

I'll attempt to answer that, if that's okay.

I think it's a great question.

Certainly the COVID situation has highlighted the labour issue in the agriculture and food sector and has pushed for an accelerated consideration of automation. What's missing is what we've been doing in terms of our R and D leading to innovations for automation. The short answer is this: not much.

We have tremendous capacity in this country to do that sort of innovation, but we haven't been investing in that sort of innovation. That includes maybe a need to go back to the future. By that I mean agricultural engineering. Engineering at my university used to be in my college, but it hasn't been in my college since the seventies. We are now working more closely with our engineering school and are including engineering schools nearby around possibilities of innovation in areas like agricultural automation, for example.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Charlebois, do you want to add anything?

[Dr. Sylvain Charlebois]

Yes. I basically think that robotizing the industry creates a philosophical problem. We always think we need to value human labour, but there's a way to do both things simultaneously. Perhaps we should make people aware of that. I even think we need to do so.

There could be just as many jobs in the sector, but there's a chance they would be more highly paid because knowledge and skills will have to change. There's a lot of talk about low wages in the sector since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that's not always the case. Generally speaking, we'll have to recognize that better qualified or differently qualified personnel will be needed to use artificial intelligence and robotics.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

Tim, the floor is yours.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you to my colleague.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I want to follow your lead and say that I'm calling in from the traditional territory of the Anishinabe, Haudenosaunee and Neutral people, just down the road from the University of Guelph.

I might stick to the point of labour.

Mr. Van Acker, can you elaborate on this? We talk about training the next generation. You mentioned that there are about four jobs for every graduate. I know the University of Guelph well because my son attends there, so I'm a proud parent of a Gryphon.

Can you elaborate on what we can do, some best practices? How can we make sure that people who are coming out of universities are highly trained in agriculture and processing, and how we can help them get into the workforce? We seem to be short on labour, yet we have the next generations who are highly trained and ready to go to work. I'd love to hear more.

[Dr. Rene Van Acker]

There are two issues.

One is being able to have young people, potential students, see the sector as a place where they want to build a career. The sector suffers from invisibility in terms of where young people see themselves, or it's misperceived in terms of opportunities for high-tech, high-growth jobs, for example. That is one issue.

The other issue is whether we have kept pace in terms of the facilities and the infrastructure we need for training that next generation of leaders in this sector. I know you would have heard from Professor Scanlon that we have a legacy of aging infrastructure at Canada's leading agricultural and food universities that teach and train those students who then create the future of this sector.

Those are the two key challenges that we face in that regard.

[Tim Louis, Liberal, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you.

That's all the time I have, but I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Louis.

Thank you, Mr. Van Acker.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks to the witnesses for their very informative testimony.

I'll go to you first, Mr. Charlebois. You mentioned a lack of motivation. We recently had Mr. Gascon here, from Boeuf Québec, who made the same observation as you did. He told us we'd be missing the boat if our agri-food sector didn't robotize or mechanize. From what I understand, you share that view.

You're appearing before a committee that will be drafting a report intended for the government. So the committee could influence matters. If you had a recommendation to make, what specific measure could the federal government take tomorrow morning to accelerate that shift?

[Dr. Sylvain Charlebois]

The main issue is access to capital. It's no more complicated than that. I mentioned at the start of the meeting that there were 28,000 vacant positions in the sector. That's approximately 13% of sectoral positions, which is enormous.

The sector hasn't enjoyed a good reputation, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was the matter of the COVID-19 outbreak at the Cargill plant. Several businesses also had to shut down for a few weeks; there were outbreaks everywhere. Incidentally, one of the reasons why there were so many outbreaks in plants in the regions is that buses are used to transport employees. That's why the COVID-19 pandemic became a big problem.

Talking about businesses and jobs in the regions, if land use is important, you have to think about creating jobs there, and robotization would be an important addition. To do that, you need money; you need capital. The federal or provincial government has to consider ways to give businesses access to capital. Otherwise it won't work.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

On another, related topic, the committee is trying to determine how it might promote the diversification of processing supply and regionalization.

You mentioned the importance of regional employment. I believe the other speakers mentioned that earlier as well. We realize we were relying on very large processing facilities. The committee wonders whether it would be a good idea to have smaller facilities spread more evenly across the country.

How could that be reconciled with the idea of modernization and mechanization? It seems hard to do. What do you think?

[Dr. Sylvain Charlebois]

There's been a lot of criticism of big abattoirs. I don't necessarily feel uncomfortable when I see large-scale facilities. What's necessary is to resolve the issue of interprovincial barriers preventing the flow of products.

The abattoirs certified by the provinces have a certain production capacity. Many of them had to close, however, because their markets were limited. However, Quebec, Ontario and even Nova Scotia make truly unique products that deserve a larger market. I think something should be done in that regard to supplement the economies of scale necessary so that production can be profitable.

I don't think we should criticize everything. You have to acknowledge that the big plants have a role to play, just as the small ones too. You also have to give the small plants a chance.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

So deregulation of interprovincial trade might help increase it. Is that correct?

[Dr. Sylvain Charlebois]

Yes, and it should be done as soon as possible. It's incredible how many barriers there are in agri-food. Our laboratory is working on interprovincial barriers with MAPAQ, Quebec's department of agriculture, fisheries and food.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

All of you, or almost all, have mentioned that there's an enormous labour shortage. Foreign workers can partly fill that void, but that's only in the short term. I'm going to ask two questions, but I don't know which of the witnesses can answer them.

First, what could be done tomorrow morning to train more workers here? What actions can the federal government take to urge people to register for university programs in the field? Does your infrastructure have the capacity to admit a large number of students?

Second, in the meantime, would it be realistic to recruit more qualified people from outside the country—I mentioned foreign workers—and select people who might be permanent residence applicants?

[Dr. Sylvain Charlebois]

I'll let my colleagues from the University of Guelph answer that question.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

[Dr. Rene Van Acker]

Yes, I think the short answer on that is both, for sure. We do have the capacity to take on those additional students if we could attract them. The sector, it seems, especially to young people, is an enigma, so it is difficult to attract them because it is a very complex and complicated sector, but it is also a very large sector with tremendous possibilities.

Yes, we need both. We need young people to come into programs. We also need to have new immigrants coming into this country who come with the skills and capacities that we need, so I think the answer is both of those.

We also need to make choices. We need to figure out whether we're going to choose to be a leader in agriculture and food in this country and invest. I—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

[Dr. Rene Van Acker]

I have one very short point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Go ahead.

[Dr. Rene Van Acker]

I have a colleague from Nanjing University in China. He ranks third in the world in food science. He has 175 faculty in his food science department. We rank fourth in the world, and we have 18 faculty in our food science department. We're doing our part. We have to invest.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Mr. MacGregor for six minutes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

As we're continuing this conversation on our food processing study, it's remarkable the parallels we have with an earlier study that we did in the 42nd Parliament on technology and innovation in this sector. I thought that was a fascinating study. I was lucky to be a member of the committee during that time.

One of the witnesses we had during that study in the previous Parliament was one of my constituents. He started up a company called EIO Diagnostics that is tackling the problem of early mastitis detection in the dairy industry, which costs the industry millions of dollars per year worldwide.

During the course of his testimony, he said as a start-up that the four pillars that foster young companies are capital, talent, advisory services and markets. He said that as a nation we're pretty good at the talent part in Canada, but a lot of companies—I think, Professor Charlebois, you alluded to this—really have difficulty accessing capital in that start-up phase, when a young, intrepid entrepreneur has that really big idea, but securing the capital to get the company from the drawing board up to an actual company....

Professor Charlebois, I'll start with you. Could you comment on his testimony and, if you want to, provide a little more detail on how the federal government could structure those grants to allow these intrepid entrepreneurs who get that big idea to actually start up something physically here in Canada?

[Dr. Sylvain Charlebois]

Those are very good points. I will say that I do mentor companies myself, from here in Halifax to Calgary. I work with District Ventures in Calgary, which is led by Arlene Dickinson in Montreal. I help companies.

The struggle we have beyond the capital issue and beyond the talent is with the discipline and the mentorship that these companies need. Once you educate venture capitalists about agri-food, about the fact that you need to be patient and you can't go in and out in two years and get your money, as you can in clean tech or fintech, then you're in good shape, but also these entrepreneurs need the support and the connection.

The one thing that District Ventures has done that I thought was really valuable is to connect and partner with retailers to test products in a real setting, which has allowed some companies to be successful. In Halifax, at Dalhousie we actually partnered with the Rotman School of business at the University of Toronto to establish what we call the “creative destruction lab”.

This lab is a model that has been replicated I think four or five times across the country, including in Calgary, at UBC, in Montreal and for us here in Halifax. It's a nine-month program providing a lot of mentorship to entrepreneurs. It provides a lot of discipline as well. We need something like this for agri-food as soon as possible. If there's one recommendation I would make, it's to make a CDL à la agri-food. Right now, there's nothing.