Mr. Thompson.
Evidence of meeting #50 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agriculture.
Evidence of meeting #50 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agriculture.
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
Myron Thompson Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Thank you.
I appreciate your input today, ladies and gentlemen. It's interesting to me, because fifty years ago I was in the middle of farming, and forty years ago I quit it. I'm thinking back on some of the things we used to think about in terms of how to maintain it in a manner that would allow us to get some good returns, some market-driven types of returns. The idea of getting subsidies or anything like them was just a thing of the future. They hadn't happened at that point.
I'm interested in what's going on with the industry. I'm quite enthused to see young farmers' organizations cropping up and trying to prepare for the future. They want to get into it. They want to become farmers. I'm just curious about what some of you think the future farm is going to look like, let's say, ten or fifteen years from now, with the young people who are gathering together, organizing, wanting to move into the industry, and figuring out ways to be able to accomplish that, because it's not easy during this particular time. I'd like to know what that future is.
The second thing I'd like to know—and I think Steve alluded to it quite often—is in regard to value-added. This is something I've heard over and over again for years and years: we want value-added. I agree that it's what we want, but I don't understand why it isn't happening. What has been preventing it? Why do we send logs, not furniture? Why do we send grain all the time, not cereal or flour or whatever, particularly in the west? I know they have more value-added in the eastern part of the country. But it just doesn't seem to happen.
Can anybody tell us what we can do? What do we need to do to make it happen? We all agree that it needs to happen, so why isn't it happening? That's all I have to ask, and I'll take any answer I can get.
2:35 p.m.
As an Individual
That's a fair question, because farmers often ask why they should have to do it too.
I'm involved with a lot of people in the processing industry, value-adding everything, from those who add value on their farms to those whose bakeries export worldwide. Some of the handicaps, in their own words, would be some of the regulatory problems around the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the lack of enabling policy on some of the exports, and perhaps a lack of a continuous presence in the designated export markets.
Most certainly in the west right now, two of the key problems are the appreciation of the Canadian dollar and the very severe lack of labour. We are seeing a lot of relocation just because they can access labour in the United States.
I'll give you an example that a friend gave me the other day, and that was a roller mill for his bakery. Some 40,000 loaves a day come out of that bakery. The roller mill in Canada was $40,000 and they said it would take nine months to come in. The roller mill in the U.S. was $9,000 and it was there the next day.
So that's a little bit of the why, Myron.
You also asked about how we get farmers engaged when 61% of them or more are sole proprietorships. We see a lot of this new-gen co-op type of discussion and so on. The reality is that partnerships will form, but farmers will form those partnerships with other farmers, move their independent agendas ahead, and try to seek some of the technical expertise to move product into the value-added arena.
2:35 p.m.
President, Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission
Part of the problem is comparing eastern Canada to western Canada, Myron, and you also compared the U.S. to Canada. We also compare Europe to Canada, and then look at the value-adding that's done. Part of the thing I have noticed over the years is that value-added comes as your population grows more and more. If we had three times or four times the number of people in western Canada, we would have more value-added to service that industry.
For a lot of the value-added, especially on the products we produce, like flour and things like that, it's cheaper to move the bulk product than it is to move the flour.
People also want the jobs where they, the people, are located. If we're shipping grain to Japan, we say, why can't we sell them our canola oil? Why can't we sell them our flour? The Japanese don't want those things to begin with, because they provide jobs in their own fields. If you talk to the pulp industry or the lumber industry, it's the same thing.
If you talk about the garment industry, which we've basically lost in Canada, it was a value-added industry at one point in eastern Canada. It has gone to where the labour charges are cheaper too.
So labour, population, and what it costs to transport the value-added good when compared to the raw product sometimes have a great bearing on where value-added is going to take place.
I know we went through the debate when they said they were going to take the Crow benefit away. We all went through that and we lost all that. It didn't add very much value-added in our country, but that was a big promise of the day.
2:40 p.m.
Treasurer, Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission
Quality control may also have something to do with it. In fact, west of Fort Macleod, they feed horses for Japan and they send them live to Japan. The Japanese want to do their own butchering and they want to know what they're getting. They don't want frozen beef or anything else, so that's another thing. And they have it fresh when it gets there.
Thank you.
2:40 p.m.
Chair, Alberta Grain and Oil Seeds Crisis Advocacy Trust
Myron, you make some excellent comments, and you basically asked about farming and the future.
Farming is not really a way of life anymore, it's a business. A farm had better be run like a business or you won't be around tomorrow.
Things are tough out there, and the changes are taking place quickly right now. People don't resist change; they resist being changed--you can change something as long as it doesn't change me. But right now, change is happening, and it's changing me and it's going to change you too. The future is going to be different, and we have to adjust to it.
Part of the problem in coming out with a program like the one you're talking about and trying to assist is that governments are always late. It takes ninety minutes for government to watch sixty minutes of television, so by the time you design a program and get it in place, the market has moved away from you. It has to be a living thing. It can't be a thing for which you say, okay, I think I've done it.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
I guess I wrap it up today.
We're concluding the day. As I have summarized it, the reason we're here is basically that agriculture isn't profitable, and we're trying to find a way to make it profitable, going forward. How are we going to introduce a new generation of people into agriculture? That's the question that has come up time and time again today.
Is the million-dollar capital gain a sufficient number? The capital gains exemption has been moved to a million dollars.
2:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association
It's $750,000.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
It's $750,000? Okay. Should it be a million dollars, or is $750,000 sufficient? I was thinking it went to a million.
Please answer very quickly, because I have a number of questions that I want to ask.
2:40 p.m.
Chair, Alberta Grain and Oil Seeds Crisis Advocacy Trust
I'll make a quick comment. I think it has to be a fluid thing. Things are changing. A dollar doesn't buy today what it bought yesterday, and it'll buy less tomorrow.
2:40 p.m.
Chair, Alberta Grain and Oil Seeds Crisis Advocacy Trust
I think it should be $1 million.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
A million? Okay.
It was suggested this morning that it seems every time a program comes in, when there's an environmental issue, there are costs added in terms of our meeting those particular standards that are set for us for that particular time. What about a 1% eco-tax on food?
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
Are there any comments? Quickly--yes, no, indifferent? That money...again assuming it would go directly back into a program that would help farmers do some of those things, whether it's fencing, a waterway, or whether it's doing a farm plan, whatever. Quickly, yes, no?
2:40 p.m.
President, Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission
Well, you're going to get diverse--
2:40 p.m.
President, Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission
My opinion is, if we're providing a good whereby people actually come out and enjoy the countryside and they demand it of us, then we could get paid for it.