Evidence of meeting #67 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 products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
My question is simple. I used to run a little snack bar. When the CFIA people would come to visit, they would always ask me where I obtained my eggs and I would have to show them the invoice in order to prove the point of origin.
How can they let in 20 million dozen? Are the eggs inspected? I'm concerned.
President, Fédération des producteurs d’oeufs de consommation du Québec
It is CFIA's responsibility to be present when American eggs are delivered. The agency people certainly know where the eggs are from and where they're going. However, we are not able to determine who actually receives the eggs, because that information is not available.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
In the case of vegetable crops, for example, we let anything in but at our end, we are not allowed to use certain pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Does the same apply to eggs?
President, Fédération des producteurs d’oeufs de consommation du Québec
All I can tell you is that our situation is not very different from other sectors. We know that ingredients or chemical products that are allowed in the United States but prohibited in Canada are used in egg production. We've seen or experienced the same situations.
Bloc
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Thank you.
We are at the one-hour mark, unless people are interested in extending. No?
I want to thank all of you for coming in and presenting today. We appreciate that very much.
We'll suspend for a few minutes to allow the table to clear away.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
We're back in session.
At the last meeting, we had a motion from Mr. Easter. Formally we have to have that put back on the floor.
Mr. Easter.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You don't want all the reasons why again, do you?
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I could give them. It has taken $246 million out of low farm income pockets.
In any event, I move 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.
This reinstating of the program would ensure the thousands of farmers who on the basis of sound financial planning and on the advice of financial advisers had made provisions to utilize the program for the financial year 2006. Those farmers have been prohibited from that utilization as a direct result of the Minister of Agriculture's arbitrary and unexpected alteration of the rules concerning the right of producers to apply for the program.
And I move that this motion be made a report to the House, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
I have a question, Mr. Easter. Is the second paragraph part of the motion?
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
It's more preamble than the motion in the first paragraph.
Mr. Anderson.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to take up where I left off last meeting, and I expect to have a bit of a discussion after this. I think we'll probably have some amendments to the motion, so we'll be able to discuss those as well.
I think it's important, as I did last time, to read out the positions of the three opposition parties with regard to the family farm options program. We may come back to that a little later, but everyone was reminded that not one of the three parties supported the family farm options program. They actually were giving the minister advice that this does not meet the needs of farmers and it needed to be shut down and changed. The minister, because he is a person who listens to the farm community, chose to listen to the opposition this time, and apparently that was a mistake, because now they're accusing him of making a mistake when he has taken their advice.
I want to talk about the framework of agriculture that we've established over the last year and a little bit that Canadian farmers have come to appreciate. We are a government that has invested $4.5 billion in the agriculture industry. I want to talk a little bit about some of the things we've done since we've come to power.
One of the things we did, actually before we were even elected, was to make a campaign promise to Canadians that we were going to bring in a grain and oilseeds payment for them. That was a promise that had also been made by the LIberals, but of course it was never kept. So it was kind of ironic after the election when we kept that and they tried to claim it was somehow their money and their promise. But farmers were not fooled. They knew that the $755 million that we brought forward was from this government, and in fact they've been very supportive of that program.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Mr. Chair, on a point of order, if the parliamentary secretary is going to table information, then at least could he be honest? The $755 million was booked by the previous government, so don't try to put on the record something that isn't factual.
Mr. Chair, I might point out as well, while we're speaking, that it would be perhaps preferable if the parliamentary secretary would keep to the motion, because what this motion deals with is the family farm options program and the fact that farmers had made financial planning around the government's two-year pilot program, and the department itself, when it came before us in terms of estimates, had indicated $246 million less.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Your point of order is taken that you want the debate on the topic.
Mr. Anderson.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Well, Mr. Easter is one of the strongest critics of the program, so I think it's important that we put it in the framework of what we've been doing over the past year.
I was coming back to the GOPP payment and the importance of that to western Canadians and farmers across Canada. There's $755 million that's gone out to farmers. More than 120,000 farmers, Mr. Chair, received a payment. The final payments were sent out two months earlier than expected, which I think is another change from the previous government.
Many times we had to listen to announcements being announced and then reannounced and reannounced. Farmers would wonder why the money didn't come out, and then that money would be moved to the next year, and we'd hear often four and five times that this same money would be announced. Mr. Easter's right, it was promised--that's actually true--but it was not delivered by the previous government. It took this government to deliver that program.
That was, I think, a good start. I think farmers have seen that as a good start. Then we went even further than that, Mr. Chair. We had promised an additional $500 million in the election campaign to farmers, and we thought that it was important to keep that commitment. Beyond that, the Prime Minister insisted that we support our farmers even to a bigger extent, so we were able to make a $1.5-billion commitment—extra commitment—through budget 2006.
Really, I think one of the reasons farmers have taken to this government is because we've kept and exceeded the promises we've made.
There was $500 million in the election campaign. We delivered $1.5 billion. We made an election campaign to replace CAIS—
Liberal
Charles Hubbard Liberal Miramichi, NB
It's a point of information, really. When we're talking about this money, could he give us the dates of the budgets? He seemed to be putting a lot on the table. It came, it went. What years?
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Actually, Mr. Chair, I don't think that's impossible to do. Perhaps at our next meeting I can bring that back. I'd be glad to run through that for the member. We can certainly deliver that to the schedule. Hopefully we'll get an opportunity to do that still.
I'd just like to point out as well that in our election campaign we talked about replacing CAIS. We're well on to doing that. We also talked about putting in place a new disaster assistance plan. That's an important component the minister is working on right now with the provincial agriculture ministers. It's coming along. There's a first ministers meeting here a little bit later. We'll talk more about the disaster assistance plan later, but I just want to assure the committee that that is moving along and the minister is taking that up as one of his main priorities.
Of course we also moved on our commitment to bring marketing choice to western Canadian grain farmers. That's coming into place, to some degree--not as much as most farmers in western Canada would want--on August 1 of this year.
Of that $1.5 billion, we moved it through the system in a number of different ways.
I'm not sure if Mr. Easter wants to say something. I know he's enthralled by what I'm saying here.
The $900 million of that $1.5 billion is going to be run through a retroactive change to the CAIS inventory evaluation method. That is something, Mr. Chairman, that was requested by agriculture, by industry. They came to the government and asked for the change in the inventory evaluation and it was something that we finally felt we needed to do. The previous government had a number of years to do that. It took them an extremely long time to make any changes at all. We were able to make that, and that resulted in a lot more money going out to farmers in 2006. Of course, we're working through that at this time.
As I said, it was a development that was asked for by industry. We also put $50 million in additional money through expanded criteria for negative margin coverage. That's another issue that was—
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Sorry, with no disrespect, I want to know if I need to get a babysitter for tonight. Are we doing a filibuster?
I've just returned to the committee. The last time I was on the committee, Mr. Anderson was in opposition. I'm beginning to wonder if he's in opposition again in his mind.
I don't mind. I can stay all night. I just want to know if I should go out and call a babysitter.