Evidence of meeting #5 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was money.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Absolutely, Ms. Ross.
I have some serious questions for you. You talked about something I agree with you on, actually, and that's the need for changes, some radical changes to our railway transportation system. I believe in fighting some of the monopolies that have been created through that system.
Do you agree that we need to fight those monopolies within the agriculture sector?
4:35 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
Absolutely, and the National Farmers Union has been very active for long before my time. Nettie Wiebe and Terry Boehm and other very significant farmers and leaders in the Prairies have been very involved with the Canadian Transportation Act and working for rail lines. It's not my area of expertise, but Brian, if you're interested, I can certainly make sure that you receive all the information. We have done some very good briefs on what should happen within the Canadian transportation system.
November 28th, 2007 / 4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
I know quite a bit about it, and I was hoping to ask you a little bit about a bill that's currently in front of the transport committee right now, Bill C-8. Are you familiar with it and the changes it's making?
4:35 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
I am familiar with it, but it's not my area of expertise.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Some of the background...I believe the NFU is supporting the legislation the government has put forward and I'd like your comment on it, tackling some of the problems with accountability within the railway systems, going after things like interswitching, and one of the big things is extending final offer arbitration to groups. Are you in favour of this legislation?
4:35 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
I don't know. The NFU is not.... I'm not on that committee for the NFU. I live in Ontario, and it's really what we call the grains and trains of the Prairies, so I'd really leave that to my colleagues in the National Farmers Union who farm in Alberta and Saskatchewan and are more impacted by the grains and trains. If they're in support of it, then obviously I trust their judgment. They're the experts in the area.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Are you advocating for the expansion of the mandate of the Canadian Wheat Board to cover Ontario as well?
4:35 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
I have grown wheat on my farm and tried to sell it privately and have always gone to the Ontario Wheat Board to sell my grain.
Selling your grain privately is a harder task than you think. It's very difficult, as an individual farmer, to negotiate like that. And the advantages of selling through the Wheat Board far outweighs the advantage of my ever selling it privately. I get protein bonuses, I get bonuses for on-farm storage, I get my cheque very quickly, and then later on, I get all these other surprise cheques in the mail as the wheat price goes up.
So I really advocate anything when it comes to single-desk selling and collective bargaining. It's been wonderful for me as a farmer, and for a farmer who has had the choice, the choice has never worked for me.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Then my question remains, Ms. Ross, are you advocating the expansion of the Canadian Wheat Board to cover Ontario as well?
4:35 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
What would happen to the Ontario Wheat Board?
Do you know what's happened? The Ontario Wheat Board has approached the Canadian Wheat Board to sell grain for them when they couldn't market it. So if there was an advantage for Ontario to come under the Canadian Wheat Board, yes, I would advocate it.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I notice in the press release you submitted before you came to the committee that this public inquiry is a major aspect of what you are calling for. Now, as Mr. Steckle has put out, we already have these numbers and these things have been brought forward. Are you reconsidering that? And what timelines do you have for this public inquiry? How many communities are you talking about?
Personally, I'm with Mr. Steckle. I think the time for inquiries and the time for debate on this has passed. We're here. We're doing consultations because we need to get something done for our producers today. I know the producers in my area no longer want to sit and wait for more inquiries. They no longer want to sit and wait to hear government officials, bureaucrats, or national organizations debate this and that. They want to see some action on some of these things.
We've had some very fruitful debate, as Mr. Friesen has pointed out. The $600 million is very much in line with what came out of discussions earlier in the year, even at a committee meeting.
I think the time for inquiries and the time for discussion has long passed, and we need to start helping our farmers immediately.
4:40 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
Absolutely. It's well past. But we need to make sure that money gets to the right farmers and to cow-calf operators and not just the big feedlots. It has to get to the cow-calf operators.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Your time has expired, Mr. Storseth. You can carry on that conversation after the meeting.
Monsieur Roy.
4:40 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
Can't I even finish answering his question?
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
We're out of time. We're going to move to the next questioner so we give everybody around the table a fair chance to get their questions asked. It's only fair to all committee members.
Cinq minutes, s'il vous plaît.
4:40 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Thank you , Mr. Chairman.
If you want to continue and answer, Ms. Ross, you have my permission.
4:40 p.m.
Women's President, National Farmers Union
Brian, I can answer your question.
Thank you, Mr. Roy.
We're asking for an inquiry because we need to know. If somebody is sick, you need to find out what's wrong with them, instead of just giving them medicine. This is a drastic drop in my stock prices, below BSE. We need to find out why that has happened. Why are the prices so low? But in the meantime, we can't wait. We're not waiting for an inquiry before we start offering assistance immediately. But we also need to ensure that it's not the same situation as we had in the BSE crisis, where it was the packers that got most of the money, or those that were vertically integrated, like the big feedlots. We need the cow-calf operators, who are barely holding on, to get that money.
In the meantime, we need to find out why this is happening. We have to stop this from happening. We're having dips like this. We have to stop that. That's the beauty about supply management. It stops that from happening. So we need to get that money out there, but we need to find out why this keeps happening and we need to stop it so we can address it at the heart.
4:40 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Thank you, Ms. Ross.
My question was in the same vein. Mr. Friesen talked about this a little earlier, following Mr. Steckle's questions. You said something that meant that it was not because of exports that pork producers' income had fallen. There are many other reasons that explain producers' decreasing income, but it is not because of exports.
Did I understand correctly?
4:40 p.m.
President, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
That's correct. The Canadian Horticultural Council is a member of the CFA. They depend heavily on exports. The Canadian Sugar Beet Producers' Association is a member of the CFA. They depend on exports. The Canadian Pork Council is a member of the CFA. They depend on exports. La Coop fédérée, from Quebec, is a member of the CFA. They depend on exports.
So I can't sit here and say, if we were to stop trade agreements or trade negotiations, we would be better off. What we need to do, of course, within the context of ensuring that we can maintain our orderly marketing structures, is to continue to negotiate for more improved and more profitable market access on a continuous basis, because, after all, we do have a large industry in Canada that can't survive simply on the markets that we have domestically.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
That is one of the reasons. Let me rephrase my question. Why did pork producers' income drop so dramatically? This is cyclical. We realize that this goes on all the time, but why? Is it because of an increase in production or because of imports? What exactly causes it? To what factors can we attribute the fact that producers' incomes fluctuate so much?
4:45 p.m.
President, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
If you look at 1998, we probably had lower cash prices than we currently have in the hog industry, but the grain price wasn't double what it was; and I don't know what the dollar was worth back in 1998, but the industry was largely built on a 65¢ dollar. So all of those now are contributing to the problem we have.
The Canadian Pork Council is not pessimistic about their chances for survival. They just know that there's going to have to be a very deliberate, methodical way of addressing the problem without making it worse—because far too often when we address a problem we make it worse—a way that won't make it worse and will maintain them as we go through this period.
Our processing industry is going to suffer as well. If we lose the infrastructure in the production part of the hog industry, we'll start losing our processing capacity as well. And of course, the entire thing is much more than just about farmers and processors. It's about communities. It's about the local hardware store where I buy my supplies.
So it has ramifications throughout the entire rural community.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Roy Bloc Haute-Gaspésie—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
That is good. That partly answers my question. You said the same thing to Ms. Ross. You talked about it a bit earlier. You said—and I wish I could remember your exact words—that farmers would have to stop depending on the government for their income, that they would have to stop waiting for the government's cheque.
How is this possible in the current context? What would your first solution be, if you had one?
4:45 p.m.
President, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
While she's thinking, can I add one more thing, Mr. Chair? It has to do specifically with the hog industry.
If the European Union were to give the rest of the world simply as much market access with no tariffs as what supply management gives to the rest of the world in Canada, our hog industry would be hugely more profitable than it currently is. So the fact that we're continuing to fight those barriers as well as the compendium on SPS issues is thick as well. So that all contributes to the problem that we have.