Evidence of meeting #66 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 research.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chair, Canadian Egg Marketing Agency
No provision. When this happened in British Columbia, the federal government gave special permission to the national agency to import eggs into the province.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
Are there no available buildings in a province or in Canada, whether they be poultry barns that were closed or barns belonging to producers who sold their quota, that could be used to assist a producer whose barns were contaminated and therefore has to wait 18 months before resuming operations? Is there any way for him to relocate his operations? Could that be one way of helping producers?
Chair, Canadian Egg Marketing Agency
We have already looked at this. However, it can take up to 18 months before an affected producer is able to put hens back in the poultry barn. That's a solution that would work better with meat-producing chickens because the wait period is shorter.
Bloc
Serge Cardin Bloc Sherbrooke, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Where are we at in terms of our efforts to eradicate Avian influenza?
Chair, Canadian Egg Marketing Agency
Our agency is currently promoting biosafety on the farm. Our producers are evaluated using a national agency program called HACCP. The majority of our producers benefit from this program, which was set up to prevent and stop the spread of Avian influenza.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Egg Marketing Agency
There isn't a way of eliminating the threat of avian influenza, because it occurs naturally in migratory birds. It's always going to be out there. It's our industry. Supply management is a business risk program, and through it we can try to mitigate those risks. We have done that and will continue to try to do it that way.
Serge Cardin Bloc Sherbrooke, QC
You say that it occurs naturally in the system, but it seems to me that we have never heard so much about it until now. How do you explain this phenomenon?
Vice-Chair, Canadian Egg Marketing Agency
The migratory bird process has always been in North America. There's that and the ability of our population to travel more and possibly pick up contamination through clothing or walking through excrement, and so forth. All those are opportunities. Because of more ease of travel, the world's at our feet today. With aircraft, people can move throughout the world very easily in short periods of time. All those factors increase the risk for our industry.
It's been out there; it's just that contamination and the opportunities we have to move those risks around have affected us more than they have in the past.
Bloc
Serge Cardin Bloc Sherbrooke, QC
While you hope to get rid of Avian influenza, at least in part, there are more liberal-minded people, economically speaking, who are considering perhaps eliminating supply management some day. We know that the Doha Round trade negotiations were temporarily suspended. We have heard that they have resumed informally and rather discreetly. So we don't know where we are going with that. We have heard that the negotiations may resume more fully in the summer. In that event, we know that supply management will be threatened, but we do not necessarily have any guarantees that the government will defend it tooth and nail to the end.
Have you had any indication from officials as to the direction the government intends to take?
Chair, Canadian Egg Marketing Agency
Following conversations and meetings that we have had with various stakeholders, including the Minister of Agriculture, among others, we have received unequivocal assurance of their support for supply management. A motion to that effect was also unanimously adopted in the House. However, it remains to be seen what kind of agreement we will end up with at the WTO.
Moreover, concerns remain, because we don't have a 100% guarantee. At present, we have been assured that the motion will be introduced at the WTO. I think that the federal government's duty is to negotiate an agreement that will serve the entire agriculture industry in Canada.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Thank you.
I want to thank all three of you for coming today and making presentations. We appreciate it.
We are going to suspend so we can get on to some committee business with some motions we have before us.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
We will come back to order.
In order of the motions as they were received by the clerk, Mr. Easter's motion is first.
Mr. Easter.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The motion is pretty straightforward. All that really needs to go to the House is that the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food recommend that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food immediately rescind the changes announced to the Canadian family farm options program on April 20, 2007, and restore the provisions of the program as originally announced, and that this motion be made a report to the House.
It's pretty simple, Mr. Chair. In fact, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food was the one who stated last July that “the new government is committed to helping farmers who are under financial stress”. The vehicle they announced to do that was the family farm options program, inclusive of $550 million to be paid out over two years.
The point is that this government brought the program forward to respond to a need that recognized that farmers across Canada have responded to the program by either utilizing it last year or making financial plans to utilize it in the second year.
What the minister has done is alter the rules late into the second year with his announcement on April 20, thus eliminating any producer who would have qualified. The minister has done this without any justification and no economic analysis of why, and the minister has an obligation to produce such justification. It's just absolutely unacceptable to the farmers affected.
Seeing that he hasn't done that, we gave him a question in writing prior to his appearing here the other day. Therefore this motion, as indicated, states that the program should be immediately reinstated.
I will just make two further points.
This is a sample of some of the letters we're getting from very concerned low-income producers. I will quote from this letter, directed to Mr. Strahl and copied to myself and a number of others:
We were encouraged to learn through our accountant that we could probably qualify for the options program, although we understood that the amount would be less than the previous year. We were devastated and extremely angry to learn that you decided to cancel the program for those who had not qualified based on their 2005 tax return. We felt that it was cowardly, underhanded, and sneaky of you to announce this at the end of April, when farmers are generally too busy to drive their tractors to Ottawa to protest your abominable leadership.
We have a lot of letters in a similar vein.
The last point I would make, Mr. Chair, is that the officials who were before this committee the other day indicated that:
In total, the original funding for [the] Options [program] was $550 million to provide farm income, business planning, and skills development support and services. The revised total is [now] $304 million [based on the changes]. The difference of $246 million will be redirected to other agricultural priorities.
Really, Mr. Chair, this is money that the minister, by his announcement, has practically taken out of the pockets of low-income farmers who, with their financial advisers, had planned on using inventory optional adjustments, depreciation, etc.—all legal means. I would submit that it's similar to the case if, in the rest of Canadian society, an individual went out and bought $18,750 of RRSPs and the Minister of Finance decided three months after the fact that it doesn't qualify to reduce your taxable income load now. It's the same principle.
For farmers to be treated with such disrespect is unbelievable, and therein lies the reason for the motion, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Mr. Chairman, I want to respond to that.
One of the problems with this is it seems as if all of a sudden the member for Malpeque has decided this is a program he wants to support. We spent the last year trying to get support for the program: no major farm group supported it at any point, that we could find.
The minister said he didn't get one single letter from any member of Parliament supporting the program. He got a lot of responses that indicated people didn't support the program. I think that it's important. I'm going to take some time to read some of those comments into the record that were made by MPs about this program, because I think it's important that we have that information. I think it's important we put it together in one package.
I want you to know I don't necessarily agree with the comments that are made here, but I think we need to note them. I'm going to quote a number of comments from MPs.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Mr. Anderson, just make sure you're not talking too quickly for our translators.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
The first quote is going to be from Mr. Steckle. He said:
I'm hearing from a number of farmers who have called me about the program, and they immediately draw their conclusion that this is an exit program from farming--getting out of agriculture. It's a welfare program. Once farmers in the business, if they call themselves truly farmers, realize that their incomes are at that level, then they're basically not farming anymore. So this is an exit program.
Now, Mr. Chair, that doesn't sound like support for this program. He says, “Certainly when you look at the second year, reducing that by a further 25% or whatever, then really it is moving that person onto the welfare rolls. I don't understand.” So Mr. Steckle, in that statement, is clearly not supporting the program.
Our argument is that moving this money, as the minister is able to do now, will make more people eligible for farm support.
Mr. Bellavance has said, when he was speaking, “When this program was created, of course the Bloc Québécois said that it was not enough to solve the farm income crisis”, although he's good enough, actually, to say, “one cannot be opposed to helping the producers who are the most in need”. But there was no support for the program from there.
Mr. Atamanenko was fairly strong on this. He said:
From talking to farmers, I know there are a couple of concerns. One is the idea of a business plan and skills that are compulsory to participate in a program, the assumption being that these people aren't good farmers and that it's almost an insult, for want of a better word.
That was his analysis of the program. That would hardly be what I would call words of support for the program.
Mr. Atamanenko, again, said, “But isn't the assumption still that they're not victims of the market or they're not doing something right; that by going through this”, and I assume he means this program and the requirements for it, “they'll do something right and become better farmers? Is that the implication?” I'd say clearly he's not supporting the program at that point.
Mr. Atamanenko, again: “The other feedback I'm getting is on this whole idea of off-farm income being included in the cap of $25,000.” Later, he says, “The feeling is that it's really not fair that some people miss the program by a couple of thousand dollars because somebody in their family has worked as a waitress or something in town.”
So, again, we're not getting the support that we need for the program, in order to maintain it, from the people who are around this table.
Mr. Easter has made a number of comments about the program, one of them is, “The problem here, and my major concern with this program, is that the government failed to provide immediate cash in the spring as they had indicated they would”, which was not accurate, because we had provided support to farmers, and he goes on to say, “which could have been under an ad hoc program based on what the problem really is, which is low commodity prices. Instead, we have this program”, and this was quoted in the House today, I think, he says, “which is clearly a blame-the-victim approach.”
Now, that sounds like a condemnation of the program to me, and certainly not one in which he's supporting it.
Again, he goes on to say:
If you're a farmer who's farmed for 30 years--and I know a lot of them--ten years ago their net worth was $1 million. Today they're going in to you with their head down, saying that they're going to have to take a skills development program. This is all wrong. The problem is low commodity prices, not skills. That's where the problem is.
Again, he says:
There is no question that these services are fine. The problem is that the whole thrust--and this program is symbolic of that--is as if it's a skills management program, when it's a policy program within Canada as a whole that results in low commodity prices.
So, again, Mr. Easter is very clearly not supportive of the program.
I think probably the most definitive statement he makes is this one, which says:
My concern also is that you see the low uptake. You see exactly the same questions coming from at least three of the four parties, saying that they've heard from people that it isn't working and it's still in its pilot stage.
Well, that would be a clear indication we should do something about that. If everyone is willing to support it, it's a reason to take a look at it and see whether it's working. He says:
Can't we be flexible enough, even as a public service, to say, okay, with a 10% uptake, clearly it's not working? If we have to extend it and we're only going to get a marginal increase, why don't we re-examine the criteria?
Well, that's what the minister's done.
Why don't we re-examine what we're trying to do here? And, above all, does the farming community need a lesson in business management to do business plans now when they're thinking about surely just getting through the year?
So, Mr. Chair, I think it's pretty clear that we don't have support for this program from the other side, and we haven't had it over the last year, or other people as well have had a list of farm organizations here that do not express their support for the program. I can go through them slowly here: the National Farmers Union, Terry Pugh said they called it a “hidden transition program” to get farmers off the land or to raise their skills. Well, that wasn't accurate, but that was their perception of what the program was.
Keystone Agricultural Producers--
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
There's no time limit. Mr. Anderson has the floor.
No, you don't have a point of order.
Liberal
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
I'd like to continue when we meet, if we're going to continue discussing the motion.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Okay.
We are to finish at 5:30; time has expired.
We are adjourned.
