Evidence of meeting #55 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 dairy.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
My next question is about the TRQ. It is at 7.5% under NAFTA. Is that right? It is 5% from the European Union, and yet we're getting over 8%. Can you explain that?
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
In other words, we're exceeding it by 0.9%.
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
That has been the result of a decision made on April 12 by the government.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
What have you done as a follow-up to this?
Chair, Chicken Farmers of Canada
We had a meeting last week, and we have devised our strategy, and we will start to put our strategy into play this week.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
This is my last question. In regard to WTO, you mentioned that the government must negotiate on behalf of all Canadian farmers. All parties supported the motion. Our government is saying it wants to protect supply management, so it's not putting it on the table, but does it not mean that once you put something on the table there have to be concessions? Would there not be a danger, then, of losing what we have so far in our supply management sector, because this is not the rationale for saying, “No, we won't negotiate it”? I don't quite understand what that means.
Chair, Chicken Farmers of Canada
To be frank with you, when the minister spoke in the House, he made it very publicly clear that Canada will sign the WTO agreement, no matter what. That is public information.
When you go to a table and you put that down, which in Canada's case means Canada will not negotiate the reduction of over-quota tariffs or increases in TRQ because of supply management, and when the media reports that you have said that you will sign any agreement, what kind of document or threat do you have towards the rest of the WTO members? You have no threat. So they look at the paper and say, “You're going to sign no matter what's on the table anyway. You said you would, so let's move on.”
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
What should our negotiators be doing then?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
You can respond, but very briefly. Mr. Atamanenko's time has expired.
Chair, Chicken Farmers of Canada
The government needs to work on behalf of all Canadian farmers. That's what the government needs to do.
I'm not at the negotiating table. That's their strategy, but they need to negotiate on behalf of all Canadian farmers. If you say you're not negotiating on one part and also say that you are going to sign the deal no matter what, you have no threat. You have nothing with which to challenge any WTO members, because you've already said you're signing the deal. Your threat of saying you're not discussing this means nothing to the WTO members.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
Very quickly, thank you very much, gentlemen, for appearing this morning. For some of you, it's not the first time we've met. I've been around this table long enough to know that some things really never change.
The question is for you, David. You said there's a return of $800,000 on a $10 million investment. That could be more broadly used as sort of descriptive of where Canada is in terms of agriculture. You're not the only industry that's in that situation.
How do we get to that 12% profitability and still maintain our compliance with WTO agreements? That is the question I am going to put to you, Frazer. Maybe others want to answer that.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
I'm sorry, I know that. You're absolutely right, but it still applies. How do you reach that?
President, Nova Scotia Cranberry Growers Association
We had better start looking at how the U.S. and EU have achieved it, and look at the green programs they've put in place and how they've moved a lot of the support into those green programs before we got to the WTO negotiation.
I'm from the U.K., and I look at farmers getting up-front cash money based on what they produced before, not what they're going to produce in the future. If they had 1,000 ewes before, they get an up-front ecological goods and services green program that reflects that. To be compliant with WTO, we're going to have to go down that route to get that 12% return.
The other way, which has been mentioned before around here, is to have a 1% levy on food at the retail store. That will raise $19 million to stabilize this industry. We are saying we don't even have to do that, because there is $90 million coming into this province from the feds and the province to support agriculture. The money is there. There just needs to be ingenuity in the policy-makers to make it get into the farmers' hands.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
Why have we been off track in terms of not getting on track with this? If we know others are doing it and it works, why aren't we doing it? Why haven't we done it?
Chairman, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
I'd put that back to you. You're the policy-makers. We should be aware of what's happening in the EU, and in the U.S. with the U.S. Farm Bill. The policy-makers have got to put policy in place to do that. The EU and the U.S. have been the leaders in supporting their rural industries; we have been the good boys.
When we go back to David's point, the tariff levels are 7.5%; we go up to 8.4%, and nobody complains. There's an article 28 on dairy and chicken—nobody complains. We've been the good boys, and that's the Canadian way. Maybe we've got to become a little bit tougher around the table.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
I could spend a lot of time with David. I totally support you, and I just can't imagine that a government can support one industry in the SM5 group with an article 28 but won't support another. That is just incomprehensible.
We have already gone beyond the 5% to the 7.5%. Now we're at 8.4%, or whatever it is, and we're calling that okay. It's not okay, and I don't care how we cut it, it isn't right. How do we translate the message from the politicians here to the bureaucrats or the policy-makers? We're not the policy-makers; we just give the message and get our butts kicked for it, but the people who really should have their butts kicked aren't at this table and will never be at this table.
Chairman, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
From Nova Scotia's perspective, we're looking at flexibility and companion programs. We want a made in Nova Scotia APF II. Yes, funding has got to be across Canada, but in Nova Scotia we need to have the ability to put in place those types of programs that are applicable to our farmers. Unless we get that 12% return, we cannot invest in the future.
I mentioned a $700 million debt load here in the province. The gentleman in cranberries has $10 million there. With 6% interest, it's $42 million. That's the budget the province puts into agriculture each year, $42 million. It wouldn't even pay our interest costs. So either we've got to get a return from the marketplace or we've got to use federal and provincial dollars in different ways, ways of ingenuity, and sit down and work together. We've got to work together, not compete against each other.
Liberal
Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON
Do we have too much government involvement?
I've travelled this country three times now doing this, and things really haven't changed a whole lot in the last 14 years that I've been around this table.
We're using the American model for other modellings. Maybe we need to look at what they've done. They have one farm plan over there—one farm plan. We have 10 provincial governments and we have one federal government. I believe the money needs to be delivered by one federal government. We also would have involvement by the provinces, of course, in programming initiatives as they would apply in those provinces, because one size doesn't fit all—we all know that—but I think if we went that way, if we had a clear understanding and our government was clearly committed to food security in this country, then we could build a framework of agreements around that. But we don't have that, and we're going to have ad hoc and all kinds of band-aid programs as long as we don't have that commitment to food security. Because we've had so much food, we think it's there for all time.
Conservative
Chairman, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
We use the term “food sovereignty”. We must have some sovereignty over our food supply. We want sovereignty over the north; we've got to have sovereignty over a percentage of our food supply. Security is important, but sovereignty is where we want to be. Our consumer wants food sovereignty, and if we listen to the consumer, listen to the farmers, and work together; it's cooperation, not conflict.
Why is the government in it? It's accountability. They don't trust the farmers to utilize the dollars to the best of advantage—and that's all governments.