Are there any other comments by anyone else?
Evidence of meeting #51 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 saskatchewan.
Evidence of meeting #51 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 saskatchewan.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
11:40 a.m.
General Manager, Saskatchewan Pork Development Board
Mr. Trost, with respect to the regulatory issues, I think it's important to make a couple of points.
First of all, for our industry or for those industries that don't have a large critical mass, licensing a new product in Canada is extremely expensive, and therefore a lot of the suppliers of those products simply don't want to do it because it's not worth what they're going to get out of it after the fact. We need to have some sort of system whereby we can rely on USDA, or whoever it is that licenses them in the U.S., and get some harmony across the borders, so that we're competitive with our immediate neighbours at the very minimum.
Second, with respect to the regulatory agencies in Canada, we need to impart some responsibility to those people to be very timely in terms of when an application goes forward to when they get the results. I'd hate to say put some pressure on them, but let's put some pressure and some timelines on them, so that when they receive an application, they have to have a response out the door within a certain period of time.
11:40 a.m.
President, Canadian Canola Growers Association
With regard to the regulatory system, I'll go back Roundup canola. Patent was filed for that back in 1987, but it didn't get issued until 2005. The way they did it actually gave the company 34 years on that patent. I don't know where the patent office was when this was all taking place, but there definitely was a problem. We should never have a patent like that on something. On a regulatory basis it was supposed to be 17 years. The way it got filed and issued just took too long.
Some of things that have to be addressed in the regulatory system are how to get these through faster and how to make sure companies are accountable for getting these through quicker and without prolonging the system. That's one of the areas you have to really work on.
Again, if you go back to canola and the way some things are done, this year the same seeds you got last year are 50¢ a pound more just because the price of canola went up. Basically, companies are making $205 per bushel of canola right now.
11:40 a.m.
President, Canadian Bison Association
I'll go back to your question on what you could do to help in terms of input costs. Tthe bison industry certainly doesn't face the same input costs that the grains and oilseed sector does, but where we could get the greatest benefit most certainly would be in regulatory changes. I think bison producers, like most agricultural producers, would prefer to get their returns from the marketplace whenever possible. If we all concentrated on that, there would be some great benefits there. In some cases we just don't move as quickly as we possibly can to allow that to happen.
For us that would certainly be the greatest assistance we could get, rather than trying to look at how we could get assistance on the input side to shore up our businesses.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
I've got a question to follow up on what Mr. Trost was talking about.
I tabled a private member's bill to remove the federal excise tax from our fuels. The cost to the treasury is about $240 million a year. Would you rather see that happen and have that $240 million taken out of the input equation, or would you rather see that $240 million filtered through government programs?
11:45 a.m.
President, Canadian Bison Association
Certainly diesel fuel is not a major component in our operations in the bison industry. When it comes to grains and oilseeds, I think they would have a different view on that. If I'm allowed to switch hats here, I'm also a grains and oilseeds producer, and I certainly think that on our farm it would be beneficial.
11:45 a.m.
President, Canadian Canola Growers Association
I agree with that statement. The cost to the grain and oilseed sector.... It just doesn't matter on the farm. We talk about getting it out of the marketplace; it seems as soon as the marketplace moves up a little, our input moves up along with it, and usually faster than the marketplace moves up.
One of the problems, and I think Mr. Easter tried to address it a couple of years ago, is how to get this out of the marketplace without our prices moving up as we move along. That's a big challenge out there. I think the government can play a role in making sure the companies aren't out there gouging producers as they move up. You can take the big companies--I mentioned seed before, and it keeps moving up along with it.
We'd just like to see the support out there.
11:45 a.m.
Conservative
11:45 a.m.
General Manager, Saskatchewan Pork Development Board
Let's keep it simple—take it off the input side, avoid the administration and the long-term delay in terms of getting it back.
11:45 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Saskatchewan Pork Development Board
As a young business person, again, we treat our farm as a business, and I'd rather have the opportunity to show what I can do with the business and treat it that way. If I'm able to be profitable and you can help me on the input side, then the support programs maybe don't need to be there. We should be supporting the farmers who are able to be successful as business people.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
I'm not going to address each one of you, but I'm going to do it collectively, because we're looking at APF and how we can move forward.
We're working in an environment where we're talking to the world community. There are impacts on our industries, whether it be the canola growers or the bison or it might be the pork industry, which I'm in. There are so many outside forces that impact and we're trying to work programs, to accommodate those programs, and the standards are set by someone else other than someone in this country. It could be the Americans. It could be the European Community.
We're talking about supply management, and there are those who don't like it within our own community and we fight each other at the world trade talks. These are not beneficial. Those kinds of ongoing discussions are negative to the cause that we've put forward.
I think as a country we have to start addressing where we're at. We're in an agricultural community. We have to stress the importance, and if we really believe that food production is important, if food security is important to this country, then we ought to, because those outside forces.... We are the great boy scouts. We follow all the health standards. We follow all the rules that are set by world trading communities. We've never really gone short on that. We put out the best and the safest products in the world, but we don't have big returns.
As a recent manuscript that we put out from our party, “Rural Canada: Sharing the Wealth Beyond Tomorrow”, says, there's lots of wealth in agriculture, but it's not going to the primary producer. We need to share that wealth, not just today, but beyond tomorrow. I think we're not really focusing on that.
I think we have too much government. I think we have provinces fighting provinces, the feds fighting provinces. I think if we had one federal department and said listen, we're going to find a way.... If we're going to have these encumbrances thrown in our way, then we're going to have to as a government, along with the producers, be able to find ways in which we develop programs to accommodate those circumstances, but do it at a national level. They don't have 50 farm plans in the U.S. They have one farm plan.
We are fighting each other. I've been at this table three times across this country. I'm hearing the same things, and in fact some of the same people; some have less hair than they had 14 years ago, but other than that the story's the same. I think we have to start looking at, as Dr. Phil would say, is it working? Probably not. Well, then, let's fix it. Let's do something different.
If you want to comment on that.... I know this is pretty broad, but we have to start looking outside the box. We still haven't crawled outside our little cubicle.
11:50 a.m.
General Manager, Saskatchewan Pork Development Board
Well, from a 30,000-foot view, I think what we look at in Canada is a whole farm type of farm support that keeps spiralling down and gets less and less all the time, and quite frankly, it's not working. You're dead right.
We have a crisis in this country in terms of the agricultural primary producers. I don't know if that's very well recognized, but we do. If we look across the border and look at what they do, they subsidize primary production at a commodity level and provide that as a basis for feeding the rest of their economy. And quite frankly, maybe that's a good idea.
11:50 a.m.
President, Canadian Canola Growers Association
Those are interesting comments, and I agree with them. One of the problems coming from the province of Saskatchewan is that we're not the richest province out there, and a number of other provinces have the dollars to put into agriculture. We're not only competing within Canada; we're also competing with United States and European communities, which does create a problem.
It's an important role for the federal government to make sure the dollars that the feds put in there are equally funded across this province, and to make sure they don't discriminate against different regions or different commodities.
One of the things you have to look at is how to put those dollars out there in a way that makes it equal across this country. I suppose if it were under the federal department, it would work very well; all the taxpayers would pay equally out there.
I think it's very important that we have food security in Canada. You can look at the food industry, or the dog food industry, and what has happened with it; that would never have happened in Canada.
There are concerns out there. I have concerns about the producers out there when you talk about food safety. I have a number of relatives, and my kids are not on the farm. One boy is, but I have three other kids out there who are in a different part of the province. When I'm producing food, I'm producing it as safely as I can to make sure nothing is going to happen. On my farm—and I likely speak for 99% of the farms—I know we do the best we can to make sure food is safe for Canadians. I really have a concern when we talk about food safety. If we have to spend a lot of dollars just to present records—If somebody is not going to be safe, the records are not going to make any difference anyway. They're something like gun control, as far as I'm concerned.
11:50 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Bison Association
First of all, it is important to look at things, as you suggested, from a national perspective. We talk about thinking outside the box, and that's a good thing. Unfortunately, when we're done with thinking outside the box, we get back into our offices and our routines and hop back into the box. What we have to start is doing outside the box.
One of the areas that really has affected our particular industry is this whole issue of federal-provincial slaughter equivalency. The federal and provincial governments have been dealing with this particular issue for years, and there is no indication that there's a resolution on the table. If we can't even get the ten provinces to work together on these issues, how can we expect to go out into a world marketplace and deal with trade issues?
On the trade front, from our perspective dealing with world trade is important, because one of our marketplaces is the European Union, and we're faced with a 20% tariff on product that goes into that country. That has to be dealt with.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Thank you.
I have a couple of questions I want to ask.
We've had the APF I, and there have been consultations on APF II across the country, first round and second round. Have you participated in those consultations? Do you feel that you have been listened to? What do you expect the outcome is going to be?
That's for everybody.
Go ahead, Mr. Bacon.
11:55 a.m.
President, Canadian Canola Growers Association
I hope they're better than what we have today, that's for sure. I have some major concerns with the CAIS program.
One of the problems I see with the CAIS program is that because they deal with a margin-based program, there are a number of producers who.... You can take a good look here at Saskatchewan. When you look at what's happened in the last five years, in 2002 there was a major drought in Saskatchewan. In 2004 there was major frost. In 2005 again we didn't get the crop off, and a number of acres didn't get seeded. It was the same again in 2006; a number of acres didn't get seeded. Basically the margins in Saskatchewan for a number of producers have fallen dramatically, and when that happens the CAIS program doesn't work for those farmers. It just does not work. They have no margins to work with.