Agriculture Committee on April 23rd, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Miller is next.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming here today and sharing your different views, particularly you, Mr. Wiseman, for making the effort to come here from Newfoundland. There had to be some adjusting, and I personally would have liked to go to Newfoundland. Anyway, thanks for coming here.

I am a farmer, and I think there are a number of farmers around the table here, gentlemen. I think I'm probably the only one who's been on both sides of supply management. I milked cows in the eighties, and I've also been on the other side, the free or open market side, whatever you want to call it.

Listening to some of your comments, Mr. Fuller, I know in the beef industry we have the same problem, that basically you can bring in New Zealand beef here and stick a knife in it and all of a sudden it becomes a product of Canada. So I understand where you're coming from. The reason I bring this up is to point out that the chicken industry isn't the only one going through that. I guess as a producer for years and a member of different farm groups, I've always been bewildered why it is that way. But there are reasons, and they're very complicated.

I would ask that government and the two different sectors, supply management and non-supply management, work together on this, instead of butting heads. There's no doubt that this government, the previous government, and all political parties support supply management. We have a very, very complex job of trying to satisfy both sides of it, if I can use those simple terms, and it isn't easy. But I can tell you that the support is unequivocally there. Obviously there are some disagreements on how we get there, but that support is there.

Mr. Wiseman, you made a couple of comments. One was on training of our young farmers and what have you—indeed, your group is key to the sustainability of agriculture. Other than that hands-on approach you talked about in learning how to drive the tractor from your parents, the same as I did, what suggestions were you looking at as far as training of young farmers is concerned?

Also, you talked about strategic growth. Although this meeting is about business risk management, and this is going to take us away from that, we do like to grow. So I'd like to hear a few more comments on exactly what involvement you were looking for from the government to help grow those sectors as well.

[Chan Wiseman]

I guess this goes back to what Mr. Devolin said about niche markets. In Newfoundland and Labrador, we have a tremendous opportunity to grow certain sectors within the agriculture industry. You can call them niche markets in certain respects, but in a lot of respects they're not niche markets. There are niche markets that can grow off on the side of those. Look at blueberries, which I alluded to, and look at the fur industry and at vegetables. With potatoes, for instance, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians consumed around 19 million pounds of them last year, and we supplied as a province about 8 or 9 million of those. So we're importing quite a bit of food into the province. What the federal government can do is to recognize the regional components of what APF will do.

We look to science and innovation to move those particular sectors along, and you look at the blueberries. Then that can be brought even further down the line into the functional foods and into the life sciences side. There's huge potential in that particular area as well.

So there's the primary production side, where we need research and development and innovation money in order to move that forward, and the renewal part of it. That's going to be extremely important for the agricultural development side, but also for the economic and the social side of our rural towns and communities throughout the province.

In terms of training, you know, the training initiatives we have in our province are quite limited. One we're currently working on now is in the fur industry, a 52-week training program we're delivering through one of the community colleges in the province. We're looking at training in the dairy industry as well, and there's also a training component right now in the blueberry industry. But it's going to be extremely important, if we're going to frame these up to young people as career options. It's very difficult to frame these up as career options if there's very limited training out there. So we need the money to be able to develop these training programs and develop the curricula surrounding them.

So there's a huge piece there with training, and the professional development part as well. That goes back to funding the young Canadian farmers as well, because there's a huge professional development component there, and a business management component as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Hubbard.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess I'm the last one.

The Farm Focus is a small newspaper that's published in Atlantic Canada, in fact I believe in Yarmouth. About two issues ago it had some very critical letters in terms of agriculture: one from Newfoundland and Labrador and another from a farmer here in Nova Scotia.

Mr. Wiseman, your Minister of Natural Resources replied to one of those letters.

It's unfortunate, Mr. Chair, that we're not going to Newfoundland and Labrador. She says that province is a growth area, that employment in that sector has increased by 20% in the last five years.

Mr. Chair, in Atlantic Canada, of course, a lot of the food comes from somewhere else. We even bring in apples. Last night, I think it was $1.15 a litre for supreme gasoline. What price would diesel fuel have to be before we saw a greater reliance on agriculture in places like Atlantic Canada? Carbon and the cost of transportation are big factors in the future of our economy and our country. What price would it have to go to—$2 a litre for diesel—before we couldn't bring apples from China, or grain to Newfoundland and Labrador for your poultry sector? These are going to be big factors in the future.

Mr. Hunter, you talk about money coming from the front door rather than the back door. You seem to think it should be done, but how? Where would the money come from? There would have to be more money. Would you take money from somebody to give to the--

[Frazer Hunter]

There doesn't have to be any more money. There's $90 million coming into Nova Scotia to aid agriculture. The agriculture budget for this province this year is $44 million. The feds put in $46 million last year. There's $90 million coming in. There was $60 million in CAIS payments, in maintaining margins—not maintaining profitability, maintaining margins—and if that money—

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

If I could just—because I only have five minutes.

We'll take the pork producers in Nova Scotia. They've had a very difficult time. In fact the minister said we can't afford to give them more money. So some of that money the pork producers were getting would go somewhere else—

[Frazer Hunter]

No.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

—or would it go to pork producers at the front door?

[Frazer Hunter]

It would go to pork producers at the front door. We've had ad hoc payments to the pork producers over the last number of years. I've forgotten what the figure is—$10 million, $12 million. The pork industry will address this, but it hasn't moved the industry. That industry wants to move. You'll hear from pork, I think in the second phase this afternoon, and you can ask them. They're very interested in this transition project of getting the money up front, because it then gives them time to change their industry.

We've been a commodity producer of pork, not a product producer of pork. The pork producers have invested in this multi-species federal plan. They see they have to move down that chain, but they need help to get there. It takes six months to get from weaner to your finished hog. You can't keep losing money. If the money was up front giving them a return, they could then transition. Transition means moving from somewhere to somewhere else, not to stay where they're at.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

I could spend a lot of time on this, but I only have one minute left.

Nova Scotia has done tremendous work with blueberries. They're not represented, except indirectly here this morning. In terms of marketing, in terms of expanding their industry, do the cranberry growers work with the blueberry people at all? They have a system of zero freezing, getting their product fresh to other markets. Is that a solution to some of your—

[David Ernst]

No. We don't work with the blueberry growers. In fact, probably 90% of the cranberries available in grocery stores, which is where most people purchase cranberries in Atlantic Canada, have been processed in the U.S. And that includes every bottle of private label juice and every bottle of Ocean Spray juice, which is 85% of the cranberry market right there. As growers, we're selling our product out to other areas to process, generally, and then what we're doing is buying back the finished goods from another area for our market. That is the problem.

The problem, the way I see it, is related to where the money goes. So little of the cost of a bottle of juice ends up in the grower's hands and so much of it is in between. The agricultural policies look at how this grower keeps himself alive, but really, this is where our business is going. We have to drive towards getting more of that market share.

The blueberry growers are starting to realize this. They started years ago. I know a little bit about their policies, but not a lot. They are working towards selling blueberries as a premium ingredient, and that marketing plan has worked very well. They sell across North America. Cranberry growers, we don't do that. We sell to a few buyers. I could name the four or five major buyers in North America. All the cranberries basically go through those markets—this is as an industry—and they come back processed. The processors make the money, the retailers make the money, and the growers don't.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

I just have a couple of quick questions.

Mr. Fuller, you were talking about the chicken and rice import. Where did that product come from?

[David Fuller]

It came from the United States.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

It was a U.S. product, okay.

Mr. Hunter, you talked about CAIS not working, yet you support the CFA proposal for business risk management, and they're still talking about a margin-based program—essentially a spinoff of CAIS—and moving ahead with a NISA-style 50% top-up.

I'm just wondering how you reconcile that. You say that CAIS doesn't work, yet we're still going to have something similar to it.

[Frazer Hunter]

We have to support it because of the timeframe we're working within, which looks to be the next three months. Something has to be done on the whole APF II. So we've developed CAIS to be a NISA-type—but in the long term, when we're looking at transition and the future of our industry vision, there have to be major changes down that road.

So in the short term, yes, we support CFA's position wholeheartedly because of the timeframe we're working in.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

We are going to suspend very quickly to allow witnesses to leave the table and to let our next group come to the table.

I will call us back within five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'll call the meeting back to order. I'm missing a couple of members, but we do have quorum so we'll continue on. They're just getting their luggage out of their rooms, I believe.

I'll repeat this later. They're having a lot of interference from our CrackBerrys, so please keep them as far away as possible from the mic. I've signed you up for that 12-step program so you can get weaned off.

Anyway, we want to welcome to the table, from the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture, Mervin Wiseman. Thank you for coming down.

From Pork Nova Scotia we have Dennis Boudreau and Henry Vissers. From the Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia we have Havey Whidden and Brian Cameron. Robert Gordon is here from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, which is just in town here.

[An hon. member]

It's a good college.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Every agricultural college is a good college.

With that, I ask everybody to keep their opening comments as brief as possible. We will hold you to 10 minutes. If you can save some time and be a bit shorter, we'd appreciate that very much.

We're going to open the floor with you, Mr. Wiseman.

[Mervin Wiseman, President, Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Agriculture]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Before I start—and I'm a bit reluctant to do this—it seems evident from so many years of experience here that a lot of people don't know where Newfoundland and Labrador is located, so I brought some maps. I actually highlighted the Newfoundland part, just in case people can't read. I believe most of the members know where to find Newfoundland and Labrador, but perhaps some of the planners who set this up really don't know, so I'd like you to take that back.

I've had this experience from consultations long before this committee came along. We had consultations on the BRM, from the federal-provincial arrangement that we've had. FIMCLA—we've had to get our politicians to try to get the people to come to Newfoundland and Labrador. So it is frustrating.

A lot more than the people you're seeing today would like to appear at these consultations, but it costs just as much to come from Newfoundland and Labrador to Halifax as it is to go from St. John's to London. It's very expensive.

Anyway, I would like to proceed right into my valuable time. I guess my big concern in not having a presence within the mindset of people who are involved in agriculture is the fact that people are not aware of what's happening in agriculture in Newfoundland and Labrador. We do have a significant industry, relatively speaking, an industry that's worth a half a billion dollars and supported by 6,200 jobs. It has experienced good growth over the last three years. The industry is definitely poised to take advantage of some new and emerging opportunities to increase that growth.

We can look at the industrial milk quota, where we've received 32 million litres of allocation that will double the industry from a value of $100 million and double the number of people employed to a couple of thousand.

We can talk about a fur industry that three years ago was only worth less than $1 million. Today it's worth $80 million and projected to move up to about $200 million over the next couple of years.

We can look at the industry around life sciences, particularly our northern dairies, and what we can do with nutraceuticals and functional foods.

We're looking in areas of the vegetable industry. We're only producing 10% of what the consumer is purchasing in the province.

We look at things like the livestock, the red meat industry, where consumer purchasing power is purchasing somewhere in the order of about $160 million from a provincial scale. Because we don't have an infrastructure in terms of slaughterhouse facilities, in terms of red meat inspection regimes, we can't get our product into the revenue stream. We can't get into the wholesalers, the retailers. We cannot export red meat products out of Newfoundland and Labrador. There is something wrong with that system. If you can't get into the revenue stream, how can you create an industry?

The new rationalization in terms of healthy eating, a healthy environment, and food safety, food security, is certainly driving the industry to the point—especially in terms of nutraceuticals, functional foods. We talk about the health food industry. There's tremendous growth. An industry in the life sciences is worth billions and billions of dollars in North America alone.

Certainly in terms of what agriculture and agrifood can do in terms of sustaining and growing the rural economy in Newfoundland and Labrador, of course, is the ultimate in rationalization for us and where we want to go. We see tremendous opportunity and we want to take advantage of it. Of course, we look to the agricultural policy framework to do some of that.

We've moved forward I think on the basis of good strategy—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Can I get you to slow down your speech a little for our translators?

[Mervin Wiseman]

Sorry about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I appreciate that very much.

[Mervin Wiseman]

I have 10 minutes. I have to move along.