Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
First, I'd like to welcome you to Prince Edward Island. I really appreciate that the committee travelled, and I appreciate the opportunity to present on the APF 2.
As I understand it, as for the Dairy Farmers of Canada, you've already met with some dairy farmers from B.C. and Manitoba.
The policy issue that I'm going to push a little is the national farmed animal health strategy. It's a little different. My colleagues around the table have probably never heard me rant about this before. It's an issue and a policy that's important to livestock producers. If time permits, I then want to briefly talk about BRM and perhaps trade.
On the national farmed animal health strategy, there's a group of 13 organizations working nationally with CFIA. They're trying to enhance and develop a Canadian animal health system. The goal is to move away from the current piecemeal approach, based on jurisdictional authorities that currently exist, and move towards an integrated animal health policy, with principles, policies, and objectives.
Globalization has presented many challenges in terms of on-farm animal health disease. There are increased imports and, in particular, more travellers from Asia. Therefore, there's an increase in disease emergence. The goal is to invest based on common principles and objectives, to clarify roles and responsibilities within the different jurisdictions that are involved in this, to develop funding, and to know who's going to deliver the oversight of it.
The reason I and Dairy Farmers of Canada are raising it is that it's a major animal health policy, especially in terms of contagious disease outbreaks that were not really addressed in APF 1. Since we're talking about APF 2, we're hoping that it's developed, whether or not it's a second pillar, a sixth pillar, or whatever they are using as the pillar approach. It's certainly an area where we can prioritize some of our energies as a country.
The key elements in this policy are prevention, preparation, response, and recovery.
On prevention, essentially emergency prevention is as important as emergency response to coordinate the different jurisdictions and the like. Standards applied equally to imports would be key.
Preparation is another key element to upgrade critical infrastructure and to work on standards and agreements internationally on disease.
On response, for example, a mass depopulation and carcass disposal are necessary tools and require preparedness. It should be a key part of a strategy.
Of course, recovery is another key issue. Recovery from market collapse requires a range of financial management tools and a disaster relief program. If I have time on a BRM, I want to address that.
Currently, for example, the Health of Animals Act deals with reportable diseases. I'm not a veterinarian, and I'm not going to even bother to try to lay them out. But the weakness is that it's a reportable disease. If you were to take a proactive approach to animal health and the importance it has in the economy, as I understand it, there are production-limiting diseases that wouldn't be covered under the Health of Animals Act and that type of thing.
On the components of financial risk management, there's a suite of defined programs to provide adequate protection and income loss, to provide research to support diagnostics and surveillance, and to increase knowledge of animal health diseases. Good animal care is key to healthy animals.
On disease management, there's new and existing programming to prevent, prepare, respond, and recover. There's surveillance and an LED network. Essentially, it's to get an assessment of where the infrastructure is, what's needed to move forward, identification and traceability, support programs, and regulated products. For example, there's the availability of drugs and vaccines and how the regulation of those is dealt with. Then finally, there's biosecurity.
I guess what I'm presenting as important to dairy farmers in Canada and also the other industries that are involved in the discussion is that we really should spend some time on some issues other than BRM. There's no question that the BRM is key, but when we're moving forward in agriculture policy....
I also sit on the Cattlemen's Association bodies. I saw what took place on BSE, and you can watch the foot and mouth disease in Britain, and I really am a bit concerned about it. You hope that CFIA is prepared, and I'm sure they are, but we could be more prepared, and as a country we should be focusing our efforts to coordinate the resources.
As for BRM, if I can shift briefly to that, supply management and collective marketing really do need to be recognized in the APF 2 as a critical program in Canada. It was a clear omission in the last one, with the exception of three provinces that had it put in.
As to the CAIS program, supply management in itself is a risk management program. I'm probably one of the few dairy farmers on Prince Edward Island enrolled in CAIS. My brother and I were in the potato industry until a couple of years ago, so we were involved in NISA and then went on to CAIS. My own personal feeling on CAIS is that it's a pretty good program if you don't have declining margins. In a situation of declining margins it's a useless program.
There are a lot of weaknesses in it. We didn't have any predictability in what we would trigger by way of a payment. But as far as the dairy industry is concerned, in the absence of dairy farmers in a business risk management policy like that, how, given a disease outbreak, would they be covered? Maybe CAIS is not the answer for producers, but if they're not involved, then it has a real weakness.
Concerning production insurance, mortality insurance is really not a great policy for dairy producers, because the vast majority of their income is from milk sales. An income loss is more important, so an interruption-of-income type of insurance would be more valuable.
I'll conclude, briefly, on trade. I agree with the comment that we're an exporting nation, but the reality is that a far bigger share of our income in rural Canada comes from a domestic market. “Agriculture and Food Value Chain Facts”, from Agriculture Canada, has data from 2004 showing that over 70% of the revenues come from domestic markets. So we really do need to take a balanced position on trade. Canada needs to be unapologetic in promoting our rights.
I'll conclude with this. It has to do with the collective marketing out in the west. My concern is as a dairy leader in supply management. With only 13.8% of the producers voting to take barley from the Canadian Wheat Board, in my view it's a strategic error as a country to do so. We're not at the eleventh hour on WTO by any stretch of the imagination, in my view, and strategically it's not wise to weaken that institution with such low support for removing it. The numbers I read are something like $59 million a year to barley growers out of the rural economy in the west. What's worse is that what's being proposed is to take that away without compensation to producers.
I'm a bit nervous, to say the least, although I'm encouraged by some of the policies on supply management. Actions speak louder than words, and I think it's a flawed strategy. I'll just throw that out and conclude.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.