Good morning. My name is Tim Loewen, and I'm from the B.C. Landscape & Nursery Association. Today I'd like to talk to you about business risk management issues within our industry.
Honourable Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, the B.C. Landscape & Nursery Association represents over 700 garden centres, retailers, landscapers, and nursery growers in British Columbia. Ornamental horticulture plays a significant role in the B.C. economy. The B.C. production sector of the nursery industry generates an estimated $175 million at the farm gate annually in the B.C. economy. The landscape and retail sector provides about $500 million worth of plants, garden products, and services to B.C. consumers annually. The nursery production, landscape, and retail garden centre industries employ over 17,000 workers in B.C. The total value-added B.C. industry is estimated at $1 billion annually, including landscaping, installation, and sales of lawn and garden products.
For business risk management, there are three major issues that impact the ability of B.C. nurseries to plant and maintain growth and prosperity. The first is natural hazard risk. Weather and weather-related damage are two of the biggest risks. For example, on March 11, the Fraser Valley encountered record rainfalls that flooded several nurseries. Today, the snowpack in B.C. is at an all-time high. With a sudden surge of warm weather, all that snow is going to melt and wreak havoc throughout B.C. There is no insurance for flooding. What are agricultural producers going to do to survive?
Secondly, we have quarantine and regulated passes. The new buzzword is “invasive alien species”. Whether it's plant pests, diseases, or weedy plants, there's a whole new level of concern across the industry when a new pest is discovered. But these pests do get in even after thousands of dollars have been spent by nurseries to implement nursery certification programs, including biosecurity, that minimize the risk of importing and CFIA-regulated plant and disease pests.
This is when the industry needs help: when the disaster occurs. Growers need to know in advance that help is there, so that they can continue to plan their business. Very recently, the industry has received word that compensation may possibly be available for the massive losses incurred to the industry due to the quarantine-pest sudden oak death. These losses go back to 2003. One nursery has already closed and another is on the brink of bankruptcy. If this compensation comes through, it will save the industry in B.C. from this one pest, but what about the next pest? Will we need to wait another four years to get help?
We need a solid disaster relief program for when the next regulated pest comes along. The industry is doing its utmost across Canada, through their participation in domestic phytosanitary certification programs, to stop incoming invasive alien species. When the situation does occur, though, nursery growers need guaranteed disaster relief, short- and long-term, to ensure that we can continue to function.
Another issue we cannot deal with ourselves is the registration of safer, more effective pest control products. We take environmental stewardship seriously, but our efforts are hampered by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency's reluctance to use U.S. data to prove product efficacy and safety. We want safer and better. Why do we have to wait so long to do better?
There's also a labour shortage. To put the labour shortage in B.C. into context, by 2012, over one million jobs will need to be filled in B.C., including 500,000 new jobs and 500,000 through attrition. During the same period, if all the B.C. high school, college, and university graduates immediately went to work, they would only fill 650,000 of these vacancies. This leaves a shortage of 350,000 workers for B.C.
The industry has been trying to access workers through a Canada-first solution, with little success. The booming construction industry, as well as the oil industry in Alberta, pays very well for start-up labour, taking as many of the workers as possible.
The B.C. nursery industry requires seasonal and long-term unskilled and semi-skilled workers. It is presently accessing them through seasonable agriculture and other import worker federal programs. We urge the committee to support the continuance of these programs to help to deal with the severe shortage. For the long-term solution, we need the government's support of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council to attract new workers to the industry, to ensure continuity, and to build a high standard of skilled people entering the industry as owners and managers.
The ornamental nursery industry develops its own solutions for many of the challenges it faces, but there are issues that we cannot solve alone. That's why we need a good agricultural policy framework: to enable producers to solve issues where they can, and to get the federal government's help where they need it.
Thank you for the opportunity for the B.C. nursery growers to provide comments for the APF discussion.