Agriculture Committee on April 19th, 2007

[Keith Kuhl]

Our feeling is that if we wanted to look at something like minimum pricing internationally, we would probably also want to look at it interprovincially, so that we'd be re applying the same rules within the country as we're applying at our borders. I'm not convinced it would be the answer to the problems, though.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Is there a comment from our pulse people?

[Lincoln Wolfe]

In the field of subsidy and trade, I know our U.S. counterparts are doing a lot of bilateral trade agreements while there is WTO lack of agreement. I believe we need to pursue bilateral trade agreements in the meantime as well, while we're hopefully bringing a WTO agreement together that will reduce trade tariffs and subsidies.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Do you have any comments, Ms. Jones?

[Tammy Jones]

There were two things you asked about. One was was the rail situation. Transportation is of primary importance to our producers, not only in servicing those export markets, but also in providing inputs back in. I think fertilizer was one that corn provided. There are significant issues there, as well as rail line abandonment within provinces, which eventually means that you're reducing rural jobs, which is a concern for everybody. I think human resources is another area that agriculture is intensely concerned with.

In the area of soy, we need the development of more infrastructure in Canada, more processing industry. One of the areas that seems to be a major concern when you talk to the food industry is nutrition labelling and the differences between the Canadian system and the U.S. system in the area of health claims and that sort of thing. It seems relatively easy in the U.S. to be able to promote those types of advantages, and much more stringent in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Mr. Easter is next.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for the very good presentations.

My first question is on production insurance. We've heard a fair bit about production insurance. I believe it was Lincoln who mentioned building innovation factors into production insurance. What we're hearing is that with new varieties, new technologies, and so on, the potential yield rate, etc., doesn't keep up with the times, so to speak. We'd like to hear from anybody who has some comments on that. That should be possible to deal with.

On the phytosanitary side, Keith, there's no question that phytosanitary has been used by other countries around the world as a non-trade tariff barrier. We're still seeing it with BSE in the over-30-month cattle as a non-trade tariff. They're not a phytosanitary, but they're using that as an excuse. We see it in potatoes occasionally in my neck of the woods—potato wart, PVYn .

Is there any sense in basically breaking the country into at least two regions, or maybe more, in order to protect segments of the country from those trade retaliation actions, especially by the Americans, when an incident occurs? We're a huge country; with two potato fields in P.E.I., the country was shut down for five or six days in terms of trade, and it's the same anywhere else in the country. Another example is the Alberta cattle.

My third question is on the disaster assistance pillar that's been talked about for the government to top NISA with, or to top the CAIS. Should we be including as a category in that not just drought, flood, etc., but also foreign subsidies and foreign trade matters, rather than always looking to ad hoc funding?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Go ahead, Mr. Kuhl.

[Keith Kuhl]

Thank you, Mr. Easter.

I think one of the biggest benefits that we, as a Canadian industry, have is the effort we have put into a very close working relationship with our U.S. counterparts. We appreciate the efforts of the Canadian government in their government-to-government efforts on the same issue.

In many respects we already have divided the country in two. On so many issues we already have a western philosophy and an eastern philosophy. The Canadian Wheat Board is a prime example, and I won't speak in favour of or against that.

On the issues of phytosanitary, it seems that our trading partners very often divide us into ten different sections--they divide us provincially. That certainly happened this summer with the nematode find in Quebec. The Quebec industry was immediately isolated and cut off from export into the U.S.

I'm not sure that dividing the country into two segments is the answer there. I think that it's continued dialogue to ensure we have the right solutions. On some of them it might be a dialogue on whether we want to maintain a pest as a quarantine pest or do we want to move it into a management plan. That's what we've done with the potato wart. There's a potato wart management plan. It's one that's reviewed annually between Canada and the U.S., both by government and by industry, to ensure that everybody is satisfied with the compliance in that. Again, on other pests we need to take the same approach. Dialogue is often the best first defence.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Wolfe and then Mr. Chorney.

[Lincoln Wolfe]

On the disaster assistance we believe that trade-distorting factors should be included in the disaster assistance. For instance, MRL concerns for non-tariff trade barriers should be part of disaster assistance.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Chorney.

[Brian Chorney]

On the crop insurance question, Mr. Easter, the ten-year average is a very long average. Looking at reducing that or making it an Olympic average may be part of the solution, but looking at it to take it to a seven-year or five-year timeframe would be helpful.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

And for corn, where it's individual farms, that makes sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Your time has expired, Mr. Easter.

Is there a quick response on corn?

[Bob Bartley]

In Manitoba we've had our share of failures. I'm not sure, but certainly if you shorten that to five years you'll have a lot more variation in your yields, in your coverage levels.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Anderson, the floor is yours.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for welcoming us here today. It's great to be here.

I want to come back to this crop insurance. I've always been a producer and thought that production or crop insurance is a good way for the government to support agriculture because it gives them stability. If the programs run properly people really have an idea of what they can protect themselves from and towards.

I've talked to people in the past who have come up with some different ideas about how to make it stronger. Have any of your organizations considered talking about an interprovincial crop insurance program that would make it bigger and would then give it more stability and more financial viability?

To extend that further, we've also had people who have asked if we should be looking at doing something with private companies or extending it even beyond the borders of our country so that there's a big enough coverage area here that we have greater protection.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Kuhl.

[Keith Kuhl]

Certainly, within certain commodities such as horticulture, I think it probably makes sense to look at things nationally.

One of the problems we have within the Canadian Horticultural Council is that crop insurance is not offered for all the crops. There's a huge variation in how crop insurance is offered between provinces, which, as I indicated, creates disparity between a producer in one province versus one in another province. With potatoes specifically, and more specifically within seed potatoes, over the last number of years we've been working with the government on an insurance program for bacterial ring rot, which is one of the most devastating issues within the seed potato industry. We've been trying to find a solution to the losses that are incurred there, and we're looking at that one nationally.

Again, we run into the fact that some provinces actually have seed potatoes included in their crop insurance and others don't. The variation in how provincial crop insurance agencies view a crop such as seed potatoes makes it very difficult to come up with a national program that would equally address provinces from across the country.

Looking at things on a national basis, if we were going to do that, we would probably need to have the ability to do that on the whole commodity.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Bartley, and then Mr. Chorney.

[Bob Bartley]

As the Manitoba Corn Growers Association goes, we're pretty happy with the way the Manitoba crop insurance is running, other than the price discovery. If we were going to go with another province, say Saskatchewan, it doesn't grow very much corn, and Ontario's corn is quite a ways from us. So I just don't know how it would work that well for us.

It's just the tweaking in the prices that we need the adjustment on.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Brian.

[Brian Chorney]

From the Manitoba Canola Growers' perspective, we have not investigated pooling crop insurance with the other provinces. A broader coverage would maybe reduce the risk overall for the insurer—the Manitoba crop insurance or similar organizations in the other provinces. It would be something possibly worth investigating.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Ms. Jones.