Agriculture Committee on Dec. 5th, 2007

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I am surprised to see that the government's programs are not more advanced. For the last two years, pork producers have been really struggling. Why has that situation not been addressed? There was an announcement of $600 million, but I am sick of hearing of that amount. Really, there is no program in place to help our farmers, and that makes me furious.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Danny, do you want to say anything?

[Danny Foster]

In fact the hog industry, if you talk to the Canadian Pork Council, will say that the margin-based program is a good program for that industry. There are some things they would like to see changed in terms of caps on payments and those types of things, but the fundamentals are there, and they support them. What we've discussed to date with them in terms of a livestock action plan and what we're talking about is changes to certain parameters. But the fundamentals of the program are largely supported by the hog industry.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Miller.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the witnesses for being here today.

Using the targets, can you estimate the total budget that's projected for the new business risk management program under the new framework?

Then, as a follow-up to that, how much of that envelope will be increase over what's in place for the current framework?

[Danny Foster]

That's a very difficult one. We don't have a fixed budget for BRM, because it is demand-driven. The new AgriInvest program, like the AgriStability program, will be demand-driven. If you recall, with the CAIS program we had an annual budget of about $1.1 billion. We were always over that. We're going to be over it with the combination of AgriStability and AgriInvest, and now we add on top of those AgriRecovery, and as well we have the production insurance program.

So we don't have a budget per se, because the programming is demand-driven, and the provinces have agreed to move forward with demand-driven programming. At this point, I can't give you a fixed number, because as we see, the situation changes from year to year. This year we have a livestock crisis, and that will drive up costs under both those new programs.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Would it a fair statement, then, Mr. Foster, to say, without having exact numbers, that it would probably increase rather than stay the same or decrease? Is that fair?

[Danny Foster]

I can't really predict one way or another.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Using the aggregate measure of support, or AMS, as it's called—and that's what Canada can spend to basically stay in the amber box for support in agriculture under WTO—it's estimated at about $4.5 billion. According to some witnesses, Canada spends about $2 billion. Can you confirm how much money is actually spent under the AMS? And with that, could you maybe explain why the available wiggle room, if there is any available, is not used more to support agriculture?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Marsland.

[Andrew Marsland]

I can confirm that the AMS limit is $4.3 billion under the Uruguay Round commitment. As Mr. Foster said, how much of it is used up depends very much on the take-up under the demand-driven programs.

There are various components of that. I don't have the breakdown with me. There is the market price support and the supply management, which is calculated against that $4.3 billion. There are the amber elements of our business risk management program, part of the AgriStability program, and so on, and various provincial programs. In any one year, since a large component of that depends on demand and the circumstances in the marketplace, it really depends on.... I don't recall, but we can provide the committee with exact numbers over the past few years for how close we've come to it. But again, it's an issue of what pull there is on the programs, depending on the circumstances in the sector.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I realize it's not an exact science, but you must have some kind of idea, or do the figures that you mentioned for the past...? You said you could get them.

Does anyone have them, off the top of your head? Anyone?

[Danny Foster]

We can get them.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Okay, perhaps I'll leave that, and maybe you can do it.

Another question I have is this. The environment is a big issue right now with Canadians, and obviously it affects agriculture as well. Can you talk a little specifically about some of the non-BRM programs that give farmers some of the tools they need to protect their land, which ultimately affects the rest of society as well? Can you talk a little about that?

[Andrew Marsland]

Yes, of course. The three big non-business risk management programs under the APF that applied at the farm level were the environmental farm planning and best management practices aspect of environment, which involved essentially farmers engaging in a planning exercise to look at the environmental risks associated with their operation, and then assisting in addressing those through best management practices.

We saw take-up of those programs really take off under the APF, beyond what we had predicted. I think we had, at last count, about 70,000 environmental farm plans in place, and as we went through the consultations we saw a desire to continue—perhaps adjust those programs, but continue in them. What we're looking for is to roll that kind of program into an integrated approach, where we do the environmental farm planning, the food safety, and renewal-type business management programming in a suite of programs, so that we can address it, rather than by having three or four or five or six people coming onto the farm with different programs, with one approach, where you'd look at the whole and then plan over a period of years how to implement those kinds of practices.

As I mentioned, the environmental farm planning was quite successful, and we've seen as we talk to producers a real interest in pursuing it. That's an interest shared by most, if not all of the provinces, so we'd be looking to continue it.

In terms of food safety, we had a lot of emphasis on building recognized food safety systems commodity by commodity. We have about 16 out of 19 commodity groups who have reached the stage of almost having those systems recognized, this work being led very much by producers. I think the discussion as we go forward with Growing Forward will be about how we implement those, reflecting the demands being placed on producers by the marketplace to put in place HACCP-like systems and so on.

Then, on business management practices, there have been a lot of discussions and consultations about how we can best provide those services to producers.

In general, those are the three types of programming we sell and the focus of the discussions going on.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have a little more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You have about ten seconds.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Could you talk a bit about this, if you can't finish it here because of time restraints: some of the programs out there that maybe can help young people get started or keep farming? Getting started today is the big thing.

[Andrew Marsland]

Again, we've seen a lot of focus on that in the consultations. We work with national partners such as young farmers' groups, 4-H groups, and so on to deliver those kinds of programs. I think that's one of the areas we're going to be focusing on in the next few months in terms of programming.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I'm glad to hear that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Batting cleanup, we have Mr. Atamanenko.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Thank you very much, folks, for being here.

Before I start, I'd like to apologize to my colleagues. It took me three days to get here from my home.

The main theme here that I want to look at—and I'm glad you folks are here—is the whole idea of producer involvement and the effect on producers.

The first category is biofuels. I'm just wondering how much incentive there is in producer involvement in this new strategy, or is a lot of the subsidy going to multinationals to set up so that they can provide jobs and provide a place for grains? I'm just wondering how carefully this is examined.

I know, the more research I do, that there are concerns with the whole idea of ethanol from corn, ethanol from sugar, the input/output, the energy, and the greenhouse gases. But at the same time, we know this is a way of helping farmers. We know this, and we're seeing some results.

I'm wondering what the long-term strategy is, especially as far as a farmer is concerned, in the whole idea of a safe environmental strategy for biofuels. We're moving into the whole APF, and I see it's been broadened to include the agri-based products industry. I'm wondering where the primary producer fits in. We often see the term “industry”, and I'm just hoping this isn't at the expense of the primary producer.

This is my last question. In the last few months, I've had an immersion in the whole issue of food security, from a conference in my town of Nelson in my district, to the NFU conference, to a meeting last Thursday—a dinner sponsored by the OFA and others.

The whole talk now is about the future of food and food security and the studies that have been done—and we mentioned it in our report, as our last recommendation—and yet the whole issue of trade obligations comes up. I'm wondering whether we can really have a food security strategy in Canada, when we have these trade obligations, to promote buying locally and promote the primary producer without being squeezed by NAFTA or the WTO, because that's another issue that seems to be coming up.

That's my question. How can we have a food-secure nation, meet our trade obligations, and make sure that the primary producer benefits from this?

[Andrew Marsland]

Thank you for the question. There are a lot of issues there. We could probably spend a lot of time discussing them.

But very briefly, in terms of biofuels and producer participation, I think it's clear that the whole biofuels and bio-products area offers tremendous opportunities for producers. We're seeing that play out already.

The government announced a couple of programs to assist producers to participate in this. The Biofuels Opportunities for Producers Initiative was a $20-million program to help farmers develop business plans and feasibility studies to look at participation. Then, the ecoABC program, or ecoAgriculture Biofuels Capital program, is a $200-million program to provide matching funding for producer participation in the development of biofuel facilities.

So there are programs in place to help producers participate not just in the growing of feed stock but in processing it into fuels. This is part of the overall biofuels strategy that has been announced. There are other components, but I won't go into those now, in the interests of time.

As to bio-products, I'm going to pass that to Dr. Fortin in a moment.

On the whole issue of food security, in the consultations on Growing Forward we heard a lot of interest in growing the domestic market and in recognizing it. We export about 43% of what we produce, depending on how you count it. So for large parts of the sector, the export market and the global market are critically important for their success. But there are opportunities in Canada, and that came out in the consultations.

We developed, under the APF, a Brand Canada initiative, which is to understand our global customers—what they like about Canada, what they see as important—and to demonstrate to them that we're close to the top, if not the top, in those areas of food safety, quality, environmentally responsible production, and so on.

A lot of those messages resonate in the domestic market, and there are opportunities, as people pointed out in the consultations, to take a greater share of that domestic market for our producers. In that context, it can be consistent with our trade obligations. Where it's not consistent is where we put up barriers that are not allowed under the various agreements we're party to.

Concerning bio-products, perhaps Dr. Fortin would like to comment about the future.

[Dr. Marc Fortin, Assistant Deputy Minister, Research Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Last year the ABIP, the Agricultural Bioproducts Innovation Program, was announced. It is meant to develop solutions adapted to the Canadian reality. Sugar cane ethanol is probably not the way to go for Canada, and the ABIP program is designed to develop Canadian solutions that will develop new product streams for Canadian producers. There are, as you have noted, concerns about corn-based ethanol and sugar cane ethanol in terms of environmental impact. There are ongoing discussions on that, and I don't think anyone has come to a final determination as to the exact environmental impacts of these production systems. They will vary, in any case, from region to region. The agricultural biomass innovation program is geared at developing the next generation of bioproducts, which are more focused on lignocellulosic technologies and are less reliant on corn and sugar.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

And waste?