Agriculture Committee on April 26th, 2007

[Ed Danen]

We, as the Perth Federation, have not. I understand that a number of the commodity organizations have.

Mary-Ann also mentioned it as far as the pork industry with PRRS and the circovirus. Things like the BSE or production insurance could have possibly helped out on scenarios like that.

There are other issues on individual farms--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

But when you look at disease that is eradicated, like tuberculosis, like BSE, where it's covered under the Health of Animals Act, versus the circovirus problems that we have in the hog industry right now, which aren't under animal health, it would probably be more attuned to those situations where you've got herd health losses in pretty astronomical figures.

[Ed Danen]

Oh, definitely, and across all commodities. I mean, livestock BVD and other scenarios like that, across a lot of the livestock industries there's no production insurance at this point in time.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Edwards, did you want to make a comment?

[Brian Edwards]

I wanted to make a point of clarification. You asked what the situation with the buyout for pricing was. Our marketing board went back to the minister. I believe they dropped the price and made another offer of $2.62 per pound of the basic production quota.

We're not exactly sure, as farmers and marketing board and TFIC, exactly what the position is. It's an aggregate amount. We're not asking the full amount from the federal government; we're asking an aggregate. If there are three partners involved, the two levels of government and the companies themselves, if there will be production in the future and it sure doesn't look like it's all that positive with the present situation, they seem to want direct contracting. That was their indication in the past. I'm not sure if they're still there now or not, but it's an aggregate amount. It's not all money from the federal government. I offer this for clarification purposes.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

I appreciate everybody taking time out of their busy schedules to present today. I have a feeling that our next big study is going to be on grain shipping and handling and looking at the WGTA, the Western Grain Transportation Act.

Your input today will definitely help us shape our final report. We hope to have that tabled in the House of Commons before the end of the session so that ministers, both federal and provincial, will have that as a reference to use in their final discussions this summer.

With that, we will suspend. Check-out time is 11 o'clock for those of you who haven't done so. I request that you do that quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I call this meeting back to order.

We have at the table with us now Jim Gowland of the Canadian Soybean Council; Grant Robertson--no stranger to committee--with the National Farmers Union; from the Dairy Cattlemen's Association, we welcome Ian McKillop and Dave Stewart; from Ontario Apple Growers, we have Brian Gilroy; and Len Troup is here with the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association.

Is Adrian Huisman going to be here? No? So Mr. Troup is here with Ontario Tender Fruit.

Now that we have everything straightened out, Mr. Gowland, you're on first, for ten minutes or less.

[Jim Gowland, Chair, Canadian Soybean Council]

Thank you.

Once again, thanks for the opportunity to do a presentation in front of the agriculture standing committee.

First of all, I'm a director with the Ontario Soybean Growers and also chair of the Canadian Soybean Council.

I can tell you a little bit about the Soybean Council. We have a formal relationship with the Manitoba Pulse Growers, Ontario Soybean Growers, and the Fédération des producteurs de cultures commerciales du Québec. Basically we represent about 25,000 growers with approximately three million acres--most of those acres, about 2.2 million, are in Ontario--that represent approximately $1 billion in farm gate receipts.

At the end of the day, the soybean industry in Canada is a net importer of soybeans and meal. Basically a third of our beans are exported for food-grade-type situations. The resulting commodity required for feed has to come out of the U.S. for soybean, whole beans and meal.

The Canadian Soybean Council was established to better represent soybean producers at the national level. We have some major ties with the Canadian International Grains Institute, the Canadian Soybean Exporters Association, Soy 20/20, Soyfoods Canada, and the Guelph Food Technology Centre.

Most of our focus includes market development. We initially started off in the area of exports. We're also involved with research and innovation through Agriculture Canada partnerships, involved with stakeholder, communication, and environmental issues. We also participate within the national oilseeds round table, especially in the areas of innovation and trade and regulations. We've also been doing a lot of work with APF II consultations on all those pillars.

Basically our vision of the Soybean Council is to stimulate industry growth by efforts in utilization. Traditionally we've been in the export business or export markets, IP systems, with soy foods and ingredients. In the last number of years we've been in a lot of bio-economy initiatives.

As I said earlier, our whole focus is innovation. We feel that's the major way to try to have returns that are better for producers. At the same time, we also recognize that to have those returns, we have to have a backstop in place of safety nets as well. I'll talk a little bit about those and why we feel they're needed within our industry.

Certainly they provide stability from highly variable commodity markets. Globally farmers have access to these types of tools. Especially given Canada's close proximity to the U.S. and their types of programs, we certainly need to get ourselves a similar set of tools as well to provide support for our producers in times of need. Some provinces already have regional programs that work, such as ASRA in Quebec and the spring price endorsement in Alberta.

Now, as to where we've been and where we're at, prior to 2003 each province negotiated different programs with the federal government. Those programs could be targeted to the different provinces. Ontario had the market revenue insurance program and Quebec of course had the ASRA program. After the 2003 federal policy, the APF was changed for two national programs--namely, CAIS whole farm and also the production insurance, crop insurance sector.

I'll mention some of the current issues we have with the safety nets, particularly with CAIS. Albeit the federal government announcement about the top end of a NISA-style program or component was certainly welcome, there are still some issues with CAIS that we feel need to be dealt with--for instance, the timeliness of payments, basically based on income tax. And it's difficult to target the specific need. There is always the offsetting of losses and other segments of the operation that can affect sometimes the main core of the business. There's also the long-term declining reference margins. The prediction of a payment, if any, is very tough to try to come up with.

So what programs worked?

As an example, prior to 2003 something in Ontario that had worked very well was the market revenue program with the production insurance. It was flexible in delivery and targeted to need. It certainly accounts for differences in crops and markets. We look at that program to address the issue of markets tending to work north and south, between the U.S. and Canada. We also recognize that there are differences in production systems in eastern and western Canada, where those type of programs, commodity specific and companion-type programs, helped out.

There were timely payments, not based on tax, and targeted to specific sectors. We always feel that those safety nets are a bridge for producers as the market develops further. We also feel that programs need to be adjusted to be more flexible, bankable, and predictable.

In the area of trade and safety nets, we do some work on that, and some of our positions are that we see that as critical for the long-term stability of the soybean industry. The Soybean Council supports free, fair, and open international trade, but at the same time we're not in favour of unilaterally reducing Canada's business risk management programs prior to other nations that do that.

Getting back to our core type of initiatives that we do, we see that our market development issues always need to be backed up with solid business risk management strategies for us to be proactive and keep moving our industry forward. We always see that we need to ensure the long-term sustainability of the industry and have those backstops in place. Market development works to build a strong, viable industry, and safety nets provide the stabilization in the marketplace until the potential of market development can be realized.

Our member organizations that I mentioned before have been very active in market development opportunities, such as new export market development, the biodiesel, soy foods, and bio-plastics and other things in the bio-economy. Certainly the ability of safety nets to support those initiatives is required within our industry.

There are some other critical points that we'd like to address with market development. We see that soybeans are a key feedstock in the bio-economy. Domestic production is required to ensure the long-term stability of the bio-economy, the bio-industry. We recognize the movement forward in renewable fuels and the opportunities they present, but at the end of the day that's one component. We don't see that this is the only silver bullet to fix things and move forward in innovation. There are lots of other things that are required as well.

We also advocate feedstock neutrality, especially in the biofuels industry. We think that it should be the marketplace that decides how and what type of commodity is utilized in those biofuels.

We also believe that any product branded as Canadian should be made from domestically produced feedstock. To go along again with the whole messaging, we certainly recognize that we need targeted solutions that complement all pillars within the APF: market development, science, innovation, and the business risk management.

We're also quite involved with research, science, and innovation. We bring forward these comments. Canada must focus on opportunity to present benefits for Canadian agriculture and related industries. We noticed that the public and private sector research and development in Canada are lagging behind our competitors, despite the studies that suggest the cost-benefit ratio of R and D is in the range of 20 to 1. More dollars are being spent in other places for that research and development and innovation, and we feel that it needs to be addressed here in Canada as well.

We also believe that all these initiatives must have a regional focus to meet the needs of producers. Just on the agronomics side, pest infestations tend to be regional, not national, and move north to south instead of east-west. We also see that research policy needs to capitalize on Canada's advantage in respect to its location in key U.S. markets and the value-added industry.

So in closing, we feel that as a soybean industry, innovation has been our key to success over the years. We look forward to a lot of other opportunities that are taking place to work with government and work with private industry, and that will be the thing that really drives our industry forward. However, we always emphasize the fact that with the dollars that all of us are investing in these opportunities, we always have to maintain some type of business risk management program to support those initiatives.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Robertson.

[Grant Robertson, Coordinator, Ontario Region, National Farmers Union]

Personally, and on behalf of the National Farmers Union, I thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Before I start I want to make a request of all of you. Actually, it's probably more of a plea. I was a participant at the first round, on science and innovation, and I've gone public about this. During the day there was a small handful of farmers invited. We put the issue of farm income front and centre onto the agenda and then when the summary was written it actually reflected a much different atmosphere from what was in the room, and what was occurring.

I sent a letter requesting some changes or at least an explanation of what was going on. Again, I was an invited person representing an important national family farm organization, and what I got back was a form letter.

So when you're doing this, you need to get control of what's happening in the bureaucracy. You're going to get pre-determined answers from the process. I saw that as well in the public round, the second round, where it was tightly controlled.

I know some of you personally, and I know that each one of you, even though you may differ politically on what might be the proper answers and what might be the best thing to do, cares about what is happening with family farmers. I know that you want to leave a legacy from your time in public office of doing something important and making sure that you're not kicking the knees out from under family farmers. And with what I've seen personally in the way this process is working, you're going to wear that, each and every one of you. You're going to wear a legacy of undermining family farmers and making a bad situation worse.

I'll leave that with you. Just remember that you're the ones who are making the decisions in the end and remember to take everything that's coming out of this with a grain of salt. I saw personally that I took detailed notes of the meeting I was in, and they did not reflect what happened in the summary you'll be getting. It's still posted online.

I say that to you quite frankly, not as being from the NFU or a farmer, but as a father who wants his children to do what I think is the most important job anybody can do down the road, and that's to create food for a community and for a nation. I'll leave it at that.

Part of what I see as happening and the NFU sees as happening with the discussions around business risk management is that it's a false discussion in a way, that it's not the problem that we don't have the perfect business risk management program. We've had a number of programs over a number of years. All of them have had failings of one kind or another.

The current CAIS program has many failings, and unless you've just flown in from another planet, given the jobs that you are doing, you're all familiar with what those shortcomings or failings are. I'm not going to detail them because they're in the brief that we presented, and I presume you know where that's going anyway.

The problem is that business risk management programs are being asked to do something they can't possibly do. It's an impossibility. Business risk management programs are meant to level out the peaks and the valleys. They assume that over the medium term there'll be profitability and it's meant to make sure that people get through those valleys.

Zero, which is what we are at in terms of realizing that income, cannot be levelled out. It's always going to be zero. So under the current suite of business risk management programs--and quite frankly what's being proposed in APF-2 is just going to be more of that levelling out at zero and you will see a further decline in farm income--you will see a further ratcheting up of market power, of big agri-business, and you will just see fewer and fewer family farmers.

Someone at my age is demographically, if you do the stats, a young farmer, which is just crazy. When I got my haircut to look nice when I was here today, there was a lot more grey hair on the floor than there was brown hair, and there's not much of it left any more. Yet demographically, statistically, I'm a really young farmer, and that's crazy. That's not good for the farm industry. That's not good for our long-term food sovereignty and food security in the country, and we have to come to terms with it. We have a systemic policy failure that has been happening over the last 20 years.

This can't be laid at any political party's feet. This can't be laid at anyone's feet, other than, in the broader sense, we have not come to terms with where we're going and the fact that we've been declining in farm income, we've been declining in farm profit. But at the same time, exports are through the roof; gross profit is through the roof.

The last five years under APF we saw the worst five years on record for realized net income for Canada's family farmers—the worst ever. That includes the Great Depression. Yet during that period of time, particularly in 2004, we saw the best year ever on record for agri-business. They made record profits like they've never made before.

So when you look at that, it pretty much proves that there's a problem, that the problem isn't that we don't have the perfect business risk management program. Yes, we need those in the interim. Over the next five, ten, or perhaps more years, we're going to have to invest in business risk management. But until we actually deal with the underlying problems, the problems of market power, the problem of consolidation and the fact that we have a Competition Act but we don't really enforce it and it's not really beefed up....

On the agri-business side, we see greater and greater concentration of market power, which puts the individual family farmer at greater and greater peril, because they just don't have the ability to negotiate a price with some huge multinational, transnational corporation. It's just not happening.

If you want to really get behind business risk management and really get to the issues of some of the problems, yes, you have to fix CAIS or replace it, and all that kind of thing in the short term, but there's a long-term project here too, and that long-term project is income, realized net income.

Just to throw some figures at you, we're seeing a great deepening of debt for farm families. It now stands at around $52 billion. That's what's happening; that's how farmers are getting through. They're increasing their debt load, their equity is going down, and they're replacing the failures of CAIS, the failures of other programs, and the fact that they just can't get what it raises.

We have a pretty mixed operation, but primarily we are cow-calf, cow-calf to finish. I'm not getting out of the marketplace anything that remotely comes close to what I should be getting on that price, but I can't negotiate a better price. I can't say, “Sorry, this year my widgets cost 48¢ to produce, so the price is going up, pal.” It just doesn't work that way. So government needs to be stepping in, both with business risk management but also with the Competition Act.

The other thing that's happening is that farmers are relying on off-farm income to a tremendous earth-shattering amount, and that has effects on our communities and on our families. If you're a young person and you see your parents working literally 19 hours a day just trying to keep things going, that's not a big inducement to say you'd really like to do that. Again, it's about income.

I know my time is getting really close, so I just want to say that one of the things we can be doing in government is supporting collective marketing and supply management. The best risk management program out there is collective marketing, single-desk marketing, and supply management. Those are the kinds of tools that farmers are going to need into the future as they face these really consolidated transnational organizations.

So get on with business risk management. We know we need to do some work on it, but there's a big long-term project here, and we're all counting on you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Robertson.

Mr. McKillop.

[Ian McKillop, President, Ontario Cattlemen's Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for inviting the Ontario Cattlemen's Association to present today to you our policy views on several different issues.

I am president of the Ontario Cattlemen's Association and a cow-calf producer from Elgin County, about an hour and a half southwest of here. With me today is Dave Stewart, the executive director of OCA in our office in Guelph.

I'd like to begin by stating three overall principles that we feel Canada's agriculture policy should comply with: policy should foster the competitiveness of Canada's industry and producers on a global basis; efficient regulatory processes that foster competitiveness and innovation should be a clearly stated aim of policy; and policy should recognize individual needs and differences of provinces, and provide for flexibility in the delivery to accommodate regional issues.

As I'm sure you know, Canadian agriculture is exposed to many risks, and the cattle industry is no exception. While OCA sees these and other private sector means as the preferred tools for business risk management in Canadian agriculture, we do acknowledge that government programs play an important role in agricultural risk management.

I'd first like to discuss the CAIS program with you. OCA has been a strong supporter of the CAIS program. We are on record, though, as requesting changes to make the program more effective for our members. You'll be interested to know that in a paper of February of this year developed by the George Morris Centre in Guelph and entitled “A Review of Business Risk Management”, Ontario cattle producers identified their top three potential risks to be, number one, margin and price; number two, border closure and market access issues related to foreign animal diseases; and, third, production-limiting disease complexes.

We believe that the CAIS program has the potential to help mitigate these risks; however, the current design of the CAIS program is not working as well as it could for beef producers. I just want to highlight briefly two or three changes that we think need to be made to the CAIS program.

First, we feel that BSE support payments and other government payments must all be included in the production and reference margin calculations for the years in which they were received. These payments should be retroactive to 2003, the beginning of the CAIS program. The governments, both the previous government and this government, have been very good at supporting the beef industry with programs. We feel that those program payments need to be included in the reference margin calculations. This is a matter of fairness and uniformity across all sectors, and we feel that this is one way that the CAIS program could be made much more beneficial for beef producers.

Program payments must be predictable and easy to forecast accurately. This is not the case right now. Producers should be able to determine how the decisions might impact the outcomes. Banks do not consider the CAIS program when looking at the overall financial situation on an individual's farm, and this needs to change.

Adjusting the reference margin to reflect the changed base of production is achieved by applying what we call benchmark production units, or BPUs, to adjust the reference margin to the new production base. These BPUs are not made public, and this again contributes to the uncertainty and the mistrust of the program. We feel that a producer's own numbers should be used in determining the BPUs. This would again help to create some confidence in the CAIS program if this BPU issue was fixed up.

Finally, the payments need to be timely. Program payments should occur in the year in which there was a need for the payment.

We also believe that the recent announcement by the Prime Minister and the federal agriculture minister, creating a contributory style producer savings account, will not benefit beef producers. This change, we feel, will shift money from the green box to the amber box, and depending on the use of amber in the future, and the potential for a reduction in Canada's amber allowance, we feel that this could be problematic. This change also moves us away from whole farm agriculture policy and addressing a system of entitlement. So we do have some concerns at OCA about the announcement that was made a couple of months ago.

In addition, the announcement allocating $500 million to address the high cost of production concerns us, for several reasons. The primary concern is the potential effect that this type of program may have on foreign trade. The cattle industry in Canada exports approximately one-half of its production in the form of live cattle and beef. We feel we are very vulnerable to trade challenges. Government support that is based on cost of production can be vulnerable to countervail actions by our trading partners, including the U.S., which is by far our largest trading customer.

We're also concerned about the emerging North American ethanol industry, which is a competitor for feedstock. At this point the viability of the ethanol industry in North America is dependent on government support and mandated use. We are concerned that government support to a competitor of the cattle industry may drastically reduce the competitiveness of our industry. This is a case where a policy that was based on good intentions but was not well thought out damages a sector that has been stronly free market for many years.

I'd also like to briefly discuss production insurance. At the ministers meetings in July of last year there was an agreement to move forward on extending production insurance to livestock. I think staff was directed to bring forward criteria and operating principles relating to a production insurance, event-driven, disaster program. We have seen a draft proposal on this and we feel it is little more than a mortality insurance program. It does not fit our requirement for an overarching production insurance program.

In terms of moving forward on a national disaster program, we feel there has to be some mechanism to have that program in place in the future. A national disaster program would address natural disasters such as drought and floods and issues like that, but the framework could also pre-emptively define a disaster and set out funding parameters, governance, and, to the extent possible, program details specific to the disaster. If there had been a framework like this in place prior to May 2003, the entire industry would have been much better off. Producers would have made much better use of the government dollars that flowed immediately after May 2003 had we had a disaster framework program in place and known what we were going to deal with rather than dealing with it ad hoc and on the fly.

I'd like to close with a few other recommendations, which have already been included in our written submission for the next generation of agricultural policy.

In regard to trade, Canada's international trade policy must be advanced by establishing a WTO mandate that empowers Canada's negotiators to achieve substantial improvements in market access. We could be exporting beef to other countries. However, we are held back by high tariffs in countries like Japan, Korean, and the European Union. It's a must that we see reduced tariffs, worldwide, through a WTO deal.

We also feel that traceability is a big issue. Again, that is in our brief, which you will be receiving. We have five principles of traceability and I would encourage you to understand what those principles are. This could affect our competitiveness, as an industry, if we get into some traceability programs that don't abide by our principles. Again, it could affect our competitiveness.

We are also strong supporters of the Canadian Animal Health Coalition's national farm animal health strategy. We feel that animal health should be a separate pillar under the next generation of agriculture policy. Included in animal health there needs to be strong recognition that animal care is part of that pillar. Animal care programs and polices need to be based on the premise that good care in the Canadian context fosters healthy and productive animals. As we move forward, animal care issues are going to be much more of an issue for the Canadian livestock industry to deal with. Again, there needs to be some recognition of that in the next generation of agriculture policies.

With that I will close. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. McKillop.

I understand, Mr. Gilroy and Mr. Troup, you're going to present together.

[Len Troup, President, Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association]

We are.

I'd like to thank you gentlemen for having us here today. I think this is an interesting forum, and we welcome the opportunity.

Brian represents apples and I represent the tender fruit industry here in Ontario. We thought we'd do a joint presentation because collectively we are the tree fruit industry and our situation is very similar. You have our presentation in front of you. We're going to go through it and share the presentation on the various issues as they're common to all the tree fruit industry.

Again, I thank you for the opportunity.

The Ontario Tender Fruit Producers' Marketing Board represents 550 tender fruit growers located throughout southern and southwestern Ontario, with a farm gate value of $50 million annually. Ontario is Canada's major producer of peaches, nectarines, pears, plums, and cherries.

[Brian Gilroy, Vice-Chair, Ontario Apple Growers]

The Ontario Apple Growers represent 300 commercial apple growers in Ontario, who collectively produce approximately 200,000 tonnes of apples annually valued at over $65 million. Ontario produces about 40% of all Canadian apples.

The national replant strategy for tree fruit and grapes is something you've heard about on more than one occasion. The Canadian tree fruit industry continues to face flatter, declining producer returns due to subsidized imports from competing jurisdictions, declining exchange rates, and rising costs.

This has resulted in an ever-increasing reliance on business risk management programs. The ability of the current programs, CAIS and production insurance, to help growers deal with the recent extreme market and weather conditions and the devaluing of our crop has been very disappointing to a large majority of our growers.

In an effort to help pull growers out of this downward spiral and provide support for them to replant newer, more marketable, and we hope profitable varieties, the Canadian grape and tree fruit industry has developed a national replant strategy, which if implemented would reduce our need for other government funding support.

I view this as an infrastructure investment in the industry similar to what's going on in other sectors of agriculture today. The strategy calls for a partnership between growers and the federal and provincial governments, who would share equally in the cost of replanting.

The B.C. government has funded a provincial replant program for the past 16 years. Nova Scotia approved a second five-year replant program in 2005. Now Quebec, as of December 13 last year, has a replant program as well. The Quebec program is of similar design to the national replant strategy that has been proposed for the federal government. Ontario is now the only major fruit-producing province that does not have a replant program.

The B.C. Fruit Growers' Association made a presentation to you a couple of weeks ago, , I believe, or in the recent past. They estimate that the B.C. fruit growers, who generate an average of $56.7 million annually at the farm gate, received $11 million more from the marketplace than they could have expected without the replant. Through their statistical analysis, they determined that without the provincial replant program, the acreage dedicated to the production of fruit would have dropped by about 43%. This is exactly what's happened in Ontario. Our production is down dramatically over the last 15 years.

Ontario's agriculture minister, the Honourable Leona Dombrowsky, has confirmed that the Ontario government is onside with a replant program, but they're waiting for the federal commitment. We have urged her to move ahead with the Ontario component to remain in step with similar provincial commitments in B.C., Quebec, and Nova Scotia, but she is waiting for you folks.

[Len Troup]

Another suggestion we have to make things better is what I think is a no-brainer, and that is a buy-Canadian policy.

U.S. producers continue to benefit from a buy-U.S. policy for all taxpayer-funded programs and agencies. You're talking military, hospitals, schools, prison systems, all sorts of things. This policy has resulted in great benefits to U.S. producers through the purchase of surplus agricultural products, thus stabilizing and expanding the markets for these products.

I've had it argued that maybe you're not supposed to be able to do this under NAFTA or something. Well, the Americans have been doing it for years, so I don't even want to hear that argument. It's one of those things that's just so obvious but it is not done in this country, and I do not understand why.

A similar policy in Canada would provide similar benefits without any additional cost to governments. A trial project for the school system in northern Ontario is being implemented right now, today, through the Ontario Ministry of Health promotion on a trial basis. This is a school snack program, and it's being implemented with the help of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association. All of that product is Ontario-grown. It's good for the kids, and it's good for the economy.

This is a good first step, but it needs to be expanded upon as quickly as possible. Canada produces excellent agricultural products, which would provide health and economic benefits. The government must adopt a policy of showcasing these products and extolling their benefits. We're proud of our products.

To repeat, this is a no-brainer. It can be done at minimal cost to government. It is just one of those things. Americans do it. Lots of countries do it. I have no idea why Canada doesn't do this.

[Brian Gilroy]

Our next suggestion is enhanced funding for the environmental farm plan. Farmers are incredible stewards of the land, and the demands on them are increasing annually, it seems. Farmers have accepted the need to develop and implement environmental farm plans for their operations. Many of the required improvements are for the benefit of the environment as well as the general public good. We encourage the enhancement of the funding provided for these improvements, as well as expansion of the levels of funding and the projects eligible for funding.

For example, growers should be eligible for funding for the planting of hedgerows along regional and provincial highways to serve as salt barriers. These barriers work, and growers have benefited from them.

Another example of the environmental farm plan is that orchardists are extremely challenged by wildlife damage. Currently under the environmental farm plan, you can get an 80% funding to enhance wildlife, but to protect your crops from wildlife damage it's only at 50%. So we'd like to see that increased as well, enhancing that part of the program and making sure it continues.

[Len Troup]

On self-directed risk management, this is something that was in place. This is an alternative to production insurance for edible horticulture. It was developed in the 1990s, because in most cases, especially in the fresh market, production insurance does not work for our crops.

Self-directed risk management was an add-on to NISA. It was extremely popular and worked very well.

When APF-1 was introduced, the then minister, Lyle Vanclief, promised that production insurance would be made available to all farmers in Canada—and we have this in writing—and further, that if appropriate production insurance products could not be developed, then the federal government would consider self-directed risk management or a like product.

Time passed, and no new suitable products have been developed. We look forward to the introduction—reintroduction, really—of a self-directed risk management program under APF-2. This is a program that works, as opposed to one that doesn't. This would provide equity among producers, because for the most part horticulture does not have a working production insurance system like most others do. It would not cost any more than production insurance. It would be much less expensive to administer and easier to budget. Growers like it. It would be simpler and predictable. We would really encourage a reintroduction of this tool.

[Brian Gilroy]

On core funding, the Canada-Ontario R and D program has provided much-needed support for research and market development and has helped producers target the research where it does them the most good. The current round of funding has all but been exhausted. We strongly recommend that this program be continued through the next round of APF.

[Len Troup]

The American market access program, MAP, has been going on for many years, and we are the victims of this program. The U.S. Farm Bill supports the market access program, which provides U.S. producers with funding for export market development. We are an export market.

Canada is a major target. Many Canadian horticultural crop producers rely on the Canadian market and therefore must compete with commodities that receive MAP funding. It is one thing to compete with other producers, but it is impossible to compete with the U.S. treasury--yet that's exactly what we have to do.

Produce coming right into our stores and competing directly against us in our home market is supported under the MAP and everybody thinks this is fine. It's not fine. It's a killer, and it's going on every day.

We recommend that the new APF include a MAP-like program to not only target export market development but also domestic market retention. It is one thing to be chasing export markets, but we're really crazy if we're giving up our home market and we are allowing it to happen by not having anything to compete with that.

This is the extent of our presentation. I just have one other comment I'd like to make, and Brian may--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I think you may want to save that for questions and answers, because your time has expired.

[Len Troup]

Oh, all right. Are we out of time?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Yes, but during question and answer period you can raise it at that point in time.

[Len Troup]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate all your presentations.

Mr. Easter, you're first.