Agriculture Committee on April 17th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Hubbard.

Mr. Thompson, we're glad to be in your neck of the woods. We were all expecting you to take us out for supper last night, but we couldn't find you.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

If the farmers got as much money for their product as the restaurants get for theirs, they wouldn't be sitting here today. And I can't afford it; I know how you guys eat.

I want to welcome all of you to my riding. Thanks for coming out.

I'll take Wayne up on his offer one of these days to go to P.E.I., because when I was in farming, potatoes were our major cash crop, so I know a little bit about that one. But I also know that during those years, the last thing we had to worry about was interference from government.

I hear the question a lot of times, “What can the government do for you?” When they used to ask us that question, when I was young and my Dad was there, he'd say, “Get in your car and go home. Go away. Leave us alone. Let us do our job, our business.” And I think there might be some merit to that.

That's why, although my farming experience in ranching, with cattle and grain growing—we had all of that—was in the States, I saw so much commonality when I came here, in the sense that I found it difficult to understand why a person had to go through certain loopholes in order to sell his own product. I couldn't believe it. That didn't sound right. I never had to do that. I used to load up a truckload of barley—it was malt—and I would go into the brewery and they'd test it. If it was good, they would buy it at a good price, and if they wouldn't, then we would go to the feed mill and grind it up with some oats and some sorghum and have feed for our cattle in the fattening pens. It was all so simple.

It seems now what we have as the biggest problem that I can see is the complication of all of this. The bureaucrats must work overtime to complicate things.

When I went to the meeting with the CAIS people, they were going to illustrate to the ranchers and the farmers in this area how to go about applying for the program. I think there were 39 people in the operation of the CAIS applications across Alberta and Saskatchewan, for sure, and it could have been into Manitoba. There were five of them who came to present to us how you do this.

I have six years of university—I'm not really too stupid—and a lot of it was with business and accounting. I hadn't the vaguest idea of what they were even talking about, how you'd go about applying for help under the CAIS program, and all of us felt that way. But in fact, I don't think they were even too sure about what they were presenting.

I don't know why governments and bureaucracies allow things to work overtime to make things so doggone complicated, to the point where it takes forever if you're ever going to get any help. So we really need something to simplify it. That's my opinion.

We also need to educate the people in the cities a lot better about what this industry is.

I've been in Ottawa 13 years. I don't think I've ever seen agriculture at the very top of priorities, yet it should be very high, if not at the top, because it's so important to this country. And if we can't see that, then we really need to educate people so they can.

It troubles me when a segment of our country, the western farmers, are affected by the Wheat Board, but the people who represent Metropolitan Toronto and those kinds of areas have a big voice in whether we have to go through the Wheat Board or not. I never could understand that. It didn't quite gel with me.

I understand Alex is saying thousands of people support the Wheat Board. You know, I've been in Wild Rose riding for 13 years. I've found three, so far, who do, of the thousands. The rest don't. It's pretty obvious to me that the ones I talk to—and there are tons of them—don't. So I don't understand why the farmers can't have a stronger voice.

But getting down to the brass tacks, I'd like to ask two questions. Robert, maybe you could help me on one of them, or Erik.

Corn dumping has a been a problem, I think, for quite a while. Am I accurate in saying that, and if so, are you aware of any actions on the part of the government to deal with that?

And secondly, to the newcomers into farming, the young farmers, are the young farmers today getting well trained in the marketing of products as well as the other things associated with farming? I'm just curious about that.

A lot of that was my own comments. It's how I feel, my gut feeling that less government is better, more people control is stronger. You can take that for whatever it's worth. That's based on my experience when I was in the business years ago. I'm concerned about the corn dumping and the—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We have only a few minutes left before we—

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

It's my riding. I get an extra two.

[Erik Butters]

I'll be very brief, Myron.

On your comments about the involvement of government, clearly in the cattle sector the issues for us are competitiveness, market access, and regulatory burden. Those three things are critical for us. We also tend not to like a whole lot of government, but government does have a role to play in terms of foreign markets, maintaining markets.

I think that leads to your corn dumping thing again. That's not really my bailiwick because I'm in the cattle business more than the grain business—I'm not in the grain business at all—but I was somewhat gratified to see the federal government take on the U.S., I think by way of the WTO, if I'm not mistaken. I think they did a WTO challenge on the corn dumping.

What we think we've seen from the American side is, we'll play by the rules when it works for us and we won't when it doesn't work for us. It was nice to see the Canadian government stand up and say, “Wait a minute here, folks, here's a set of rules. What do you mean you're not dumping? Clearly, under the definition of dumping, you're dumping.”

I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

[Leona Dargis]

Thank you very much for addressing the young farmers.

The younger generation is definitely a lot more interested and is getting educated in marketing and economics and whatnot. It has been one of the course areas that colleges have definitely grown on, as well as the universities. I see that. But when we take these courses in an educational environment, such as colleges and universities, it's a lot broader and not as specific, whereas at an Alberta young farmers' general meeting, it was specific to agriculture.

Farmers need to sell their product, because they put into it what they need. They realize market diversity and would like to expand and make the most of that. They're working toward that, and it's growing as we see more and more involvement from the young farmers.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. McBain, did you want to follow up with anything?

[Douglas McBain]

I'll comment on the WTO challenge to the U.S. initiated by Canada on corn subsidies.

It wasn't necessarily on dumping; it was an overall subsidy program by the U.S., parallel to the cotton case. Recently, there hasn't been corn dumping in Canada, especially within the last 9 or 10 months. The price of corn has significantly increased to the point where it's not coming in as a feed grain competitive crop at the moment.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

I want to thank all of you for your interventions today. It will all help us form our recommendations to the House of Commons on the future of APF and the next generation.

With that, we're going to suspend. I ask the witnesses to clear away from the table and I'll call the next witnesses. We want to get started as quickly as possible.

We're suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We're back in session. We welcome to the table on our APF hearings Bill Dobson from Wild Rose Agricultural Producers. From Alberta Pork we have Jurgen Preugschas and Ed Schultz. From the Canadian Animal Health Coalition we have Matt Taylor, executive director; and Dr. Duane Landals. We also have Darcy Kirtzinger from the Alberta Barley Commission.

I want to welcome all of you. We are discussing APF and we want to keep the comments focused on that.

We'll start with you, Mr. Dobson. Please keep your comments to 10 minutes or less.

[Bill Dobson, President, Wild Rose Agricultural Producers]

Thank you very much. Welcome to Alberta, everyone. I'm certainly pleased to have been invited to come to make a few comments today.

We certainly recognize the value of this process. We were involved in some of the preliminary discussions. We also took part in the public discussion. The original APF was certainly a positive event, as far as we're concerned. It set out a framework that programs fit into and it came to the benefit of producers. So we have a great deal of respect for this process.

I wasn't exactly sure, but I've heard two versions.... We're supposed to be talking about business risk management in the morning, but that's not what I'm talking about. I saw that after I'd made up my comments. So I will just say on business risk management that we see the need for a predictable and effective program. I'm sure in the discussions we'll have some questions about that. We certainly see that as very important. The last APF program seemed to concentrate on that. For five years we tried to straighten that out, and it still hasn't really happened.

But I want to focus on three other things. One is the recognition of farmers' contributions to ecological goods and services renewal, specifically the farm succession programs that will enable young farmers to enter the industry. I overheard the comments of the first witness and will certainly follow up on them. We also need some meaningful programs that will promote strategic growth.

On ecological goods and services, we farmers have always been recognized as being good stewards of the land. We have to balance the need for a lot of production with environmental responsibility. The public has come to expect that from us. They have expectations that there'll be safe food, erosion will be kept to a minimum, wildlife habitat and the beauty of the countryside will be preserved, and endangered species will be protected. We are very happy to do those things as producers. But we also feel that some of those things are in the public good, and we would like to see the public share in the cost and benefits of them.

In the next five-year period of the APF we'd like to see us collectively examine exactly what processes we go through on the farm that are in the interest of the public. When those are identified, we need to figure out ways that the public can share in some of the costs.

At Wild Rose we've been very supportive of the ALUS program, the alternate land use services, which Keystone Agricultural Producers in Manitoba has introduced. It's in the pilot stage, and Delta Waterfowl has been raising a lot of funding to see how that process would work. Everybody says they're supportive of it, but I think we need to get down and really start to give it support financially and make that process work.

I know this could be expensive, but from a public acceptance standpoint there's no doubt that the environment and environmental issues have come to the top of people's minds. In other countries, help from the government has been funnelled through environmental programs, and it's much more acceptable to the public.

I just want to make sure we add that we should build on the environmental farm plan program and give the ALUS proposal serious consideration. On farm food safety programs, which I think are also public goods, we need to look at having those shared as well.

On renewal and the increase in the average age of farmers, there is no doubt that trend must be reversed. I see you just had someone here from the Canadian Young Farmers' Association. We're very supportive of that group and the Alberta Young Farmers Forum. They have provincial associations. What they're trying to do with very little money is just a drop in the bucket. We've been involved in those associations, and they need to reach out to the entire young farming community of Canada. They really need some assistance to be able to do that and make their own organizations stronger. I think that would be money very well spent.

We can talk about all the nice ideas for getting farmers into this and doing what we have to do to get young farmers involved, but there also need to be financial incentives. I know Farm Credit Canada has a special program, and I think the government would be very wise to look at extending that to other financial institutions and actually giving the down and dirty financing to help people get involved.

On growth and strategic growth, we need to be very careful that we don't confuse business risk management and insurance-type programs with the actual growth that's necessary to get the industry up and moving. We've just been through the BSE crisis, and we saw that farmers were trying to get their own packing plants going. We now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with biofuels, and I'm sure you have great interest in that. But farmer ownership of some of those facilities would absolutely be a very good way to increase that value in a hurry.

It's an area where we really need to be on a level playing field with our American neighbours and at the same time take care of the feeding industry. We need to work together strategically on that as well. If grain prices are going to be higher, we don't want to hurt the feeding industry. But when we face reality, we built the feeding industry on low grain prices, which has not been in the best interest of grain producers. It has put them in dire straits.

There is talk about cooperatives and helping farmers get their own facilities, but we need to back that up with some significant programs on lending, tax incentives, and loan guarantees. We can also take a part in sharing information and understanding exactly where the initiatives and opportunities are. That would be good for the government to involve itself in.

To conclude, we can never overemphasize the need to have consultation with industry, as we're just having. We need to accept one thing—that government is going to have a role to play in agricultural production. We always want to try to get out of having the government provide any assistance—the industry should fly on its own. I'd love that too, but we need to face reality that around the world that's just not the way it happens. We need to be strategic in how that assistance is delivered.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Dobson.

Mr. Preugschas, please.

[Jurgen Preugschas, Chairman, Alberta Pork]

Thank you very much.

I'd also like to add my welcome to the committee and honourable members coming to Alberta to listen to us. We really appreciate the opportunity to share some of our views from Alberta and across Canada with you. I do think that the consultative process is very important. We're quite confident you'll take our comments back and use them.

I just want to very briefly indicate, representing Alberta Pork and the pork industry in Canada, that at times I think we in Canada don't understand the importance of the hog industry in this country. We export over a million tonnes of pork out of Canada on a yearly basis. For beef it's about 400,000 tonnes. So the amount of product we export is over double—two and a half times—that exported for beef. As well, we import 130,000 tonnes, compared with beef imports at 200,000 tonnes. That's just to lay a bit of ground work. As Canadian representatives, you have to understand how large the hog industry is and how big an effect it has in Canada and what we add to the gross national product of this country. It's very significant. At times we feel we're being left out of policy decisions. We spend far fewer research dollars than are spent for any of the other commodities, which is totally out of sync with the number of dollars we create for the general well-being of Canada. I just want to put that in perspective. You as our political representatives have to understand and realize the additional importance that needs to be placed on our industry.

I just want to go through some of the issues I've laid out here, and I'm certainly open to discussion about them later.

Certainly market development and trade are very important issues for the pork industry. We export over 60% of what we produce in Canada. It goes to other countries in the world. We're certainly disturbed at times by the policy of our government on the WTO in trading off some sectors against others. It's very important to us in the hog industry that we have as free access and as free trade around the world as possible. The WTO negotiations are absolutely critical for our industry. We believe they're critical for the Canadian agriculture industry in general. I think sometimes we get bogged down in politics and vote buying and support specific commodities rather than the general good of Canada.

I challenge you to really set politics aside and look at what's good for this country. I was here as well and listened to some of the comments before. COOL—country-of-origin labelling—in the U.S. is a major issue for us as well. We're very involved in that. The Canadian Pork Council has put together a committee to work with some of our American counterparts. It really is a counterproductive program that the Americans are putting in place as a non-tariff trade barrier. Again, I think it's something that, as a government, we do need to discuss and talk about with the Americans, and really make it clearer that our borders need to be more open when we trade with each other. Putting things like this in place just isn't good for either of our countries.

If we look at the business risk management side, there are several factors to it. Our concern always is to treat all commodities in the same way. I'm a hog farmer, a grain farmer, and a cattle farmer. I think I can speak from personal experience about how the three commodities are treated very differently.

If we have trouble in pork, we virtually get nothing. In grains, they have the ability to have production insurance, crop insurance. They get cash payments on acreages sometimes if there's a panic somewhere else. When there's a drought, cattle farmers get an acreage payment, and they have crop insurance as well for pasture and hay. These things are not available to me as a hog farmer.

At some point in time, I think our government needs to realize that if we have programs in place, they need to be in place for all commodities. As a major industry in this country, we are being left out in that regard. I'm encouraged by the cash advance and the discussion on production insurance in order to expand it, but we're again trying to fit a square peg in a round hole in trying to use the grain program to fit into livestock. It really doesn't work. We need to get our heads around that and work around it.

The newest announcement was about what may be a NISA-like program again. It didn't work for hogs before. What would ever make you think it's going to work for us in the future? I think it's a political decision that really wasn't thought through very well.

The competitiveness issue is absolutely critical. We passed out a report that we've drawn up, through the Canadian Pork Council, the Canadian Meat Council, and Canadian Pork International. We actually sent it to Minister Strahl. I hope you have some time to read it. It's a very in-depth document on some of the problems facing our industry at the present time. If you'd like to ask questions on it, we can certainly deal with them in the question period. On competitiveness, that's what that is.

In addition, I just want to highlight one thing. High-yield grain varieties are something on which we're lagging behind the Americans. If you look at the graph, the yield of corn has gone up and barley and feed wheat are like this. The gap is just widening more and more. We need to catch up on that. We need to do our job. We need to put research in and we need to be open to accepting new varieties. We need to remember that. We have a grain variety, a high-yielding feed wheat variety, but because visual distinction isn't possible, we don't allow it into this country. So what do we do? We make it harder and make our industry or the total feeding industry less competitive.

The last issue I want to address is the environmental issue. There's a lot of discussion on the bioenergy side. It's a very important fact. I know we keep going around it and we're calling it an environmental thing. Well, the discussion before was quite clear that it's very questionable whether it's an environmental program or something else.I would like to give you a solution. I believe the bioenergy program, expanded into the biogas portion, can be environmentally positive for the world, for this country, and for this province. Put our energy toward that rather than taking food out of production or increasing the price of food. Putting some of the dollars into biogas generating plants uses a byproduct retaining the actual nutrient value of these products. We can create energy and heat from that, so I think that's where we need to put our energy. It will be money well spent and will be something very positive.

In addition, when you add the carbon credits to that, it becomes an extra income stream for the livestock industry. It becomes a solution environmentally and a solution financially as well.

Mr. Chairman, with that, I'll leave the comments now and welcome any discussion on questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Dr. Landals, are you making a presentation?

[Dr. Duane Landals, Director, Canadian Animal Health Coalition]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for the opportunity to be here this morning.

I'm representing the Canadian Animal Health Coalition today. I'm a veterinarian and I represent the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association on that board. I'm here with our executive director, Matt Taylor. Hopefully, we can make a representation to you.

My intention is to follow the document that we've handed out to you fairly closely, in essence of time. If there's a detail, we'll have it covered and we'll have an opportunity to answer questions at the end, if there are any.

We would really like to review the development of a strategy for animal health for Canada, and specifically how that relates to the APF 2. As you mentioned, it's certainly relevant to your discussions today. We'd like to make some suggestions for a direction forward that the committee may consider in its deliberations.

The Canadian Animal Health Coalition is a not-for-profit organization that was formed in 2002 to serve Canada's farmed animal industry. It is a partnership of organizations all recognizing shared responsibility for an effective Canadian animal health system. We're a broad-based group that represents a multitude of different stakeholders.

Our mandate is to assist industry in meeting domestic and international market needs by promoting a collaborative approach to animal health. It is resourced with expertise, information, and funded projects, to offer Canada's farmed animal industry the capacity to share information and build consensus by providing expertise in project management. Essentially, it provides a forum where stakeholders can get together to discuss multi-stakeholder and multi-jurisdictional animal health issues, because animal health is something that really doesn't fit into one neat box within one industry or within one jurisdiction. It's important to recognize that there are very few other organizations that do have the same mandate as our organization and can say they represent the farmed animal sector, as opposed to an individual commodity group.

Canada's farmed animal industry represents over 50% of farm cash receipts. If we consider those receipts before other payments, it's 58% of the farm cash receipts, so it's very important to the agricultural economy of Canada. There are approximately 155,000 producers in the farmed animal sector, or nearly 44% of the agricultural producers in this country.

In one of the earlier presentations, we heard how important exports are to our industry. Canada's pork and swine industry is the largest exporter of pork products in the world. Our beef industry, prior to BSE, was the fourth-largest exporter in the world and will hopefully soon regain that prominence. Again, a number of our other sectors recognize international recognition through quality and performance, particularly poultry and dairy.

It's a very large sector, and it's important to recognize that the farmed animal industry isn't just what we normally think about in terms of beef, pork, dairy, and poultry. We also include horses, mink farming, sheep and goats, and all sorts of other varieties of smaller sectors. It's important that those organizations have a voice so that they can express themselves in a collaborative manner.

As far back as 2002, stakeholders requested a strategic approach to animal health. We've had several occasions to do this. Through the coalition and other groups, with requests to the minister of the day and to groups such as the federal–provincial–territorial assistant deputy ministers' committee, we've talked about developing a national animal health strategy. By this, we were clearly referring to a farmed animal health strategy, because while linkages to other species groups are there—companion animals, aquatic animals, wildlife—the focus of our organization is on farmed animals and the agricultural component.

In 2005, this committee recommended a strategic approach to animal health to the minister of the day, following a coalition presentation. Industry recognizes and appreciates the significance of that recommendation and invites similar action following the presentation we're making to you today.

In 2006, a concept paper for a national animal health strategy was prepared through a national consultation process. That document was prepared by the coalition, with the support of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It was at that time that the need for two levels of strategy was clearly identified.

The first is a high-level strategy identifying the national animal health strategy, which includes all species. That's where I talk about wildlife, fish, companion animals, research animals, zoo animals, and farmed animals, all of which affect human health. We can't look at a health strategy without considering all aspects of these.

There is a need for a high-level national animal health strategy.

The second tier of the strategy, though, is the one that our organization is not more interested in but more involved in, and that's the national farmed animal health strategy. While that may be a component of an overall strategy, it's an entity somewhat unto itself. This may be a lower-level strategy or part of the big picture, but it certainly is a strategy that needs to be well considered if we're going to look at the needs of the Canadian public and the farm production sector.

In late 2006 there was an unprecedented series of meetings with the executive directors and presidents of 13 national commodity associations, and they prepared a statement of principle for our national farmed animal health strategy. It is attached to the brief that we submitted to you today for your reference in the future.

In early 2007 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency began to work to develop the high-level national animal health strategy, and it is expected that will be tabled in 2008. Also in 2007 our coalition has begun work to develop a more focused farm animal health strategy, and we hope that will be available by the summer of 2008 as well.

One key element of the activity should be to facilitate the farmed animals' input into the higher-level strategy and to ensure both appropriate involvement and minimal duplication. While these two are different projects, there is a lot of duplication. There is a risk of wasted resources if we're not collaborating and working together to make sure we're going in the same direction.

A number of activities have taken place so far. The coalition has been involved in, obviously, the national farmed animal health strategy, but more than that, it has gone well down the road in working on developing a strategy for Canadian zoning at the West Hawk Lake zoning border control function between Manitoba and Ontario. Various sectors have worked to enhance emergency management capacities. Coordinating these strategies nationally and provincially is a very difficult job.

As far as benchmarking surveys on the capabilities we have for emergency preparedness goes, there's been lots of support for a national farmed animal care council to be developed on a Canada-wide basis, similar to the provincial animal care organizations that we see in several of the provinces in Canada. We've worked to help facilitate the development of a Canadian livestock identification agency, and a benchmark survey on biosecurity across the industry in Canada.

Much of the work is funded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's advancing Canadian agriculture and agrifood program, the ACAAF program, and additional funding has come from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

There are other industry activities that are important in developing a large strategy. Biosecurity activities have been developed. Particularly the poultry sector should be applauded for the work they have done in this area. There are identification activities and traceability discussions throughout the industry to try to determine how we are going to deal with animal and product traceability throughout the various sectors of the farm livestock.

Emergency preparedness is particularly well developed in the poultry sector, and a lot of work in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario has been done in this area.

New animal health legislation has been introduced in one province—Manitoba—and as well is under development in both Ontario and Alberta. These are very important steps to having a strategy that's going to work.

There has been discussion regarding disaster funding, on how we are going to deal with some of the costs that occur when an unpredicted animal incident occurs. Disease surveillance and laboratory networking have been enhanced. Consultations with industry regarding the APF and calling for the recognition of a separate pillar for animal health have been part of our drive in the last while.

Canada clearly has proved its capability to address major animal disease outbreaks or other significant animal disease incidents, and it's important to remember that all the animal health issues we deal with are not foreign animal disease. There are other disasters that can occur that can have a very significant impact on animal health.

This development has been pushed, of course, by recognition of the zooanotic or human potential of animal disease. Avian influenza has obviously brought to the forefront of the media, the politicians, and the public of Canada how important it is. Avian influenza is a very bold example of the challenges we may face in animal health and of the fact that the interface between animal health and human health is something we can't overlook.

Considerable activity remains to be done. Largely what we've been doing is project-based work, where an issue comes up and we deal with the project, but there has not been an overall plan or a strategic direction for animal health management in this country. There has never been a secure line of funding for the activities that need to take place to have an ongoing program that will protect us into the future for the things that are unpredictable, and it remains unclear with which authority leadership lies. We have cross-jurisdictional, cross-commodity responsibilities. Again, if I can use the avian influenza as an example, we're not certain if avian influenza is a human disease or an animal disease. I guess what agency it's under will depend on in which species the disease is discovered first in the country. That's a difficult situation to be in, and it's an issue that needs to be resolved with an overarching strategy.

The Canadian public and the Canadian farmed animal industry needs an effective animal health system to deliver a predictable suite of programs necessary to safeguard human and animal health—again, I emphasize that while we're in agriculture, we are also dealing with human health, and we have to keep that in mind—and we need to sustain the industy's leadership role in both our domestic and our international marketplaces. The animal health system requires two levels of strategy, and I'll just re-emphasize that we need a high-level national animal health strategy and we need a focused farmed animal health strategy, both of which are important to get the goals of industry.

We wish to suggest a way forward, acknowledging that we cannot afford a logical, sequential approach and that we cannot look to any single tool or any single factor to safeguard the public or the industry. Animal health, like public health and food safety, is a public good, and that needs to be recognized. Responsibility for this public good is shared by federal, provincial, and territorial governments. In these responsibilities for protecting Canadians from the risks associated with animal disease, the farmed animal industry recognizes that it too has a significant role to play, so there needs to be a collaboration between all industries and all levels of government to reach our goals.

The farmed animal health strategy needs to be positioned within the animal health box of the newly proposed resource protection component of the food safety pillar of the APF2. We would like to see high recognition of animal health in that program as it develops. Longer-term aspects could be incorporated into both the national animal health strategy and subsequent generations of APF. The existing and in-process initiatives must be recognized and they must be grandfathered within the strategic framework that's developed as we go forward. A lot of work has been done in a piecemeal manner, or on a project basis—I guess that's a better way to say it—but we need to recognize that.

In conclusion, we want to ask the committee to ensure that animal health is recognized as animal health within the APF2, not as a third-level objective buried under resource protection. In itself, as part of food safety and as part of plant and animal health, we think animal health is more important than that and would like to see a stronger recognition for that. And we need an unambiguous and clear recognition of what agency is in charge of animal health in this country.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Kirtzinger.

[Darcy Kirtzinger, Policy and Research Coordinator, Alberta Barley Commission]

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and committee members.

My name is Darcy Kirtzinger. I farm near Hay Lakes, Alberta. As a young farmer, I'm very encouraged at consultations like this to hear what's going on and to hear what people are thinking about in regard to the future of agriculture. It's certainly going to affect my generation of farmers.

I'm here today on behalf of the Alberta Barley Commission. We represent roughly 17,000 barley farmers across Alberta. Those producers represent roughly half of Canada's annual barley production.

I'd like to thank you all for making this trip out west.

I'm going to speak to you today about some principles on safety nets that our business risk management committee has come up with. Business risk management in agriculture must be three things: it must be market neutral, WTO green, and profit focused. I'm going to talk about each of these in turn.

In terms of being market neutral, the Alberta Barley Commission is in favour of a safety net program that does not encourage producers to make cropping plans in accordance with government programs. Cropping plans must rather be based on signals from the marketplace. This is why we have supported the whole farm approach for safety net programs in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future.

On WTO green, market access is paramount to Alberta farmers. Therefore, any program must be set up in such a way that it does not have the potential to become a trade barrier. My generation is certainly aware of globalization, and we don't want to see any adverse effects. Given the current environment of globalization and WTO regulations, safety net programs must be decoupled from other programs such as crop insurance. Each program must stand alone and on its own merit.

We support farmer involvement, not the current fee situation in CAIS but one that is more akin to the deposit proposal in CAIS's original incarnation. The deposit has always remained farmers' money, whereas the fee is not. We do not agree with the NISA approach because it creates entitlement and it therefore takes away from need. NISA, in its current form and in the past, has been seen as a rich farmer's program.

Finally, BRM programs must be profit focused. As I've already mentioned, we support the whole farm approach in order that programs do not drive production plans. Farmers are expected to make business decisions based on the marketplace. Therefore, the overall aim of safety nets is to reduce the capitalization of government program money for its own sake and to encourage production based on market signals. On principle, a program cannot encourage the production of a crop or commodity for which the buyer is not willing to pay at least the cost of production, regardless of the reason for the low market prices.

Safety net programs under business risk management should be able to assist farmers when there is a downturn in profit. Those same programs should exist to help farmers get through hard times and to allow for a change in their business plans should the need arise. Unfortunately, profit-focused programs may have the effect of pruning some of those farms that are only kept afloat with continuous support. In other words, a safety net program must be based on business principles, not designed to attempt to address social problems.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

We'll open it up to Mr. Steckle.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you very much.

I hardly know where to begin, because I'd like to address a whole series of questions to any one of you particularly.

As a hog farmer from Ontario, let me assure our hog producer here this morning that I share the frustration and concern you have with the industry, going forward.

Let me begin by setting a premise as to where I see agriculture going in the future. Some of us around this table—Mr. Thompson, and the three of us on this side—came in 1993, and we've been at this table for a long time. We keep hearing the same issues; we've heard them now for at least 14 years. In my former life, I heard them for the previous 25 years, so we really haven't gone very far in terms of progress. Perhaps we might have intermittent progress from time to time, but the long-term progress is really pretty insignificant.

I'm going to throw this on the table as I've done in other meetings, and I'm going to do it again this morning. I am wondering whether it's time we started looking at where the programs should be developed and where they should be funded from.

My view is that we are competing with provinces. We are competing between provinces and the federal government on every occasion that we have program development. We keep blaming one another, and farmers seem to be the victims in all cases. I think it's time we started looking and thinking forward as to whether it's time to make one department of agriculture at the federal level. That doesn't mean there won't be provincial involvement in terms of the research and all those things, because demographically and geographically we are somewhat different from province to province, but we have so many instances in which we are competing, and ultimately we are the losers.

I think of what happened with the BSE issue and how we came to the rescue of the beef industry, whether adequately or inadequately; nevertheless, we had the beef producers here in the previous hour and a half and we found that we have the capacity now. We helped build that capacity. Now we're selling into a marketplace and filling about 70% of that capacity. Why? It's because the almighty dollar has chased our cattle south of the border, the live animals; the slaughtering is not being done here. Though I agree with you in terms of cooperatives and farmer-owned initiatives whereby farmers become involved in seeing value added into their industry, I really wonder whether there is enough commitment in any sector of our farming community today where you would see a continuum of support, given that a dollar is going to drive things in another direction. I think the beef issue is a good example of what's happened.

I think we have to start taking some very serious consideration to what we're doing. Darcy, I know you spoke to the issue of grains. Grains and oilseeds have been in a quandary for a good many years, and certainly over the last four or five years. NISA hasn't worked properly; we know basically the opportunities that present themselves there. You talked about the NISA program being a rich man's game, and it is: if you haven't got any money, you can't get into it; if you have money, you don't need the program. We had another program recently brought forward that basically was an exit program from agriculture. These are all band-aid programs, and I think we need to have a policy.

I know my time is expiring and I haven't even got a question. I could speak for a long time on this issue because I'm passionate about it. I believe we have spun our wheels; we've left a lot of rubber on the road, but we haven't got anything to show for it. As an industry we must move forward and make some very tough decisions, including us as politicians making those decisions, because if food security isn't important in this country, then we'll never have farm programs. Once we adopt the theory, the policy, and the principle that food security is, among all things, the most important thing in this country—equal to our military security—and believe that, then we will find and devise and design programs that will accommodate that kind of thing.

I'm going to leave it at that. Those are some of my comments, but you could pick up on anything I've said. I have a lot of questions, but I can't even get into that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I ask that everyone's responses be very brief.

[Jurgen Preugschas]

Again, there were a lot of good comments there. I'd like to address them in several ways.

The competitiveness issue is really a major one. That's where it's government's responsibility to try to remove some of the regulatory barriers we have. It isn't only true in the hog industry, it's true in all parts of agriculture.

Our bureaucracy seems to have become more important than what we produce. Bureaucracy produces nothing, it just costs money, so this is where you can be a key part of the solution. Take a serious look at reducing regulatory burdens.

In the hog industry, in the grains industry, in the cattle industry, in every other industry, we're competing with fewer regulatory controls in the States. We allow into our country imports of these products that we're not allowed to use because we've been so slow in providing the regulatory approval. We come up against barriers every time we try to do this.

It's up to you, the politicians, to say to your bureaucrats that they need to clean this up and make it more efficient and more competitive for our agricultural industry. If you do anything at all, that would be valuable.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Kirtzinger, very briefly, please.

[Darcy Kirtzinger]

In my presentation I talked about how business risk management should address just that and not try to address social problems. There is a growing divide between urban and rural, though, and we need to address that. The environmental farm plan and the resulting stewardship funds are seen as a way to make federal dollars palatable when you transfer them to farmers. You're saying to city people that there's a benefit to them by giving this money to farmers, but it's only under that guise. Agriculture has to be seen as something that is vital, as something that is necessary, and as something that we have to protect regardless, number one.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Before Mr. Gaudet starts his questions—

[Dr. Duane Landals]

Mr. Chairman, could I just comment on that last question?