Agriculture Committee on Dec. 12th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Minister.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

I'll start off with your tirade on the Wheat Board to begin with. When you analyze it, 62% of the farmers in western Canada supported some change, some sort of open market attitude at the Wheat Board. The Wheat Board itself has come to that idea, too, that it's going to have to change, because it's losing market share.

If we had that same plebiscite today, Mr. Easter, I'm sure it would be in the 75% to 80% range, judging by the calls I get from the affected farmers in my area.

Moving on to the livestock sector, we've had very productive talks with the sector, with the provincial governments. As to an exact date, no, I cannot give you that. We have assured the sectors that there will be announcements before Christmas that will allow them to start to move ahead to work with that.

I have had discussions with the chartered banks, with Farm Credit Corporation, and no one is foreclosing at this point on any particular sector. There are certainly case-by-case issues that have been ongoing longer than just this latest glitch in the market.

The dollar is down. Interest rates are down. A combination of their portions of the $600 million that will be available in early January and the targeted cash advances are what has been on the table at this point, that have had agreement between my department and the provincial departments.

I do have ongoing discussions with the provinces coming up tomorrow afternoon, and we'll have to wait and see what comes out of those discussions. I cannot commit to anything at this point, until we have those discussions with the affected provinces as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You have about a minute and 10 seconds.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

So you are committing that there will be an announcement before Christmas, and it will contain some specifics so the industry can take these points to the bank.

I disagree with your statement, Minister, with all due respect, that no one is foreclosing. I can show you. I've been with some people who've been foreclosed on in the last eight weeks, and it's not pretty.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You have a point of order, Mr. Storseth?

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

My translation may not be working, but I just wanted to set the record straight.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Sorry, Brian, you are subbed out right now.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

I'm still allowed to talk; I just can't vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

That's up to the rest of the committee members.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

It's in the Standing Orders, Mr. Chair. You should consult with your clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

He doesn't agree. You cannot ask questions.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

All right. Maybe Mr. Easter would like to clarify the record as to what the minister actually said.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You have about one minute left.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

So on foreclosures, I differ on that opinion. There are foreclosures happening.

On the beef and hog industry, I think it's wrong to use the provinces as a fallback position. Sometimes the federal government has to show leadership. Previous federal governments did that by coming out with payments on their own and asking the provinces to come in later. This crisis is of a magnitude that we absolutely need a commitment now from the federal government.

Second, if you have time, the EU announced subsidies for their pork exports. I find it a little puzzling that our industry is sometimes a little too concerned about the trade agreements, and we don't want to ruffle feathers there. But has your department done any analysis of what that will mean to our industry? Is the Government of Canada going to challenge, under international trade law, those subsidized exports from the European countries in the hog business?

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

My hope is to have some fairly succinct announcements before Christmas. I will know more after I speak with my provincial counterparts tomorrow.

The biggest thing the livestock sector--cattle and pork--has given us are guidelines saying that whatever we do cannot be trade challengeable. They're very concerned about that.

To your point about the European Union, they have made the announcement on the 75¢ per kilo. There are a couple of other hurdles it has to go through yet, so it's not in play. As soon as we saw that announcement, I drafted a letter and sent it to the commissioners of the EU saying we were discouraged by that, as we move forward in Geneva to a new WTO agreement.

I also have calls in to the U.S., Australian, and New Zealand governments to work together to push back on that particular issue. So we are being as proactive as we can, given the fact that they haven't actually implemented it yet.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Your time has expired.

Monsieur Bellavance.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Clearly, I will not take the five minutes I am allowed to say my piece, but I sense a certain lack of respect for our committee. Mr. Chair, it is probably important that you hear what follows.

I feel a little rushed. The minister has shown up out of the blue. In other committees, when a minister is invited, we have some kind of advance notice of when he is going to appear. I am quite capable of asking questions. But I do not understand why things are different here than in the other committees.

We even dig people out of jail to come and testify at committees, while we here have the hardest time getting the minister, and then he appears out of nowhere. We thought we were going to have a filibuster on a motion dealing with the Canadian Wheat Board, but instead, we have the minister with us for a short time, and so on.

In any event, I was getting ready to say that I was disappointed not to have seen him before the break. So, I am pleased that he is here, but I would like to...

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Monsieur Bellavance, I announced at the end of the committee meeting on Monday that there was a good chance that the minister was going to be here, and he would try very hard to attend the meeting.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

I did not hear that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

There were no guarantees at that time, but we were--

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

I understood that he wanted to come, but, look, his name does not appear on the orders of the day.

Enough whining about it. Mr. Minister, I am happy that you are here before Parliament rises for the break.

I am going to continue along the same lines. People have come to give evidence to the committee, as a matter of urgency, and have asked us for help. So we are passing that request for help to you. Just today, the chair of this committee has tabled our committee report. I do not know if you have had a chance to become familiar with the report on the crisis in the pork and beef industries. You told Mr. Easter that you have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow or at least some discussions about the pork sector.

Although you have said that are not in a position to announce anything here, as Canada's Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food, are you ready to respond to the requests of pork producers, that is, to their requests for loans? The request poses no problem under World Trade Organization rules. This is what pork producers are asking for as a matter of urgency: loans. Are you in favour of that request? Is it your intention to support it in your discussions tomorrow and to work towards implementing it?

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Absolutely. I apologize for my lack of announcement or fanfare in coming before the committee. I know you gentlemen are up to speed on the agricultural issues, so I didn't think you'd need much of a head start. It was my only opportunity before Christmas, and I wanted to be here before Christmas because of the livestock situation.

The minister from Quebec, Monsieur Laurent Lessard, is my co-chair in the fed-prov meetings. He and I will be having a short discussion on the agenda before the meeting tomorrow. It is basically, at this point, completely on the livestock situation, with nothing on Growing Forward, and so on. We have agreement in principle on that, so it's strictly the livestock situation across the country that we will be discussing as to what the provincial governments are prepared to do. There are programs that we share 60-40, and we want to make sure they are onside with those as well, and they are affordable and fairly quick in their delivery.

We are certainly seized by this. When we had our first fed-prov meeting in November in Toronto, we came in a little earlier on the Friday evening and spent three hours discussing livestock, before we went on to the Growing Forward situation. Hindsight is always 20/20. If we had been able to bring in the new suite of programs a year ahead, as we proposed to do, a lot of this would have been mitigated by the stand-alone disaster component. We would have been able to funnel money through there a little differently than we do now.

But nothing is off the table at this point. We're having these discussions with the hog sector specifically. They're hurting more than the cattle sector at this point. They cycle faster so they're going down quicker than they were before. The difference in the dollar really hurt them quite a bit. We're seeing 75¢ per kilo talked about from the European Union, which again is going to build on that open wound. So we are addressing it all. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we'll have some more concrete actions in mind.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

As to the beef sector, I had written to you about Quebec beef producers who were asking for $50 million over two years to help them adjust to the new standards on specified risk material. You told me that it was really not possible to do.

Why, exactly? Of course you are aware that the new standards require beef producers to incur additional costs while American producers, their direct competitors, are able to get money from the sale of SRM, which our producers cannot do.

Until very recently, E. coli standards were also more stringent for our producers at the American border. They were at a clear competitive disadvantage. Yet you told me in your letter that it was not possible to grant the request for $50 million over two years to enable our producers to adjust. Nevertheless, the standards have once more been imposed quite quickly. It seems to me that the assistance could very well have been provided, in order to let the producers get back on their feet.

Why do you not want to do it?

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Sure. Back up just one little bit, Mr. Bellevance. It was actually the agricultural sector, the livestock sector, cattle particularly, that called for that level of SRM removal and traceability and so on to help open markets. During the BSE crisis, we went ahead and did that. Of course, we are looking at—what will I say?—some extra cost to the Canadian industry at this point that is unfairly weighted against them, as opposed to our trading partners, and that's the point you're making.

I don't disagree with that. The situation we find ourselves in is that the $50 million that the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and the provincial arms of that are asking for would in no way get back to the farm gate. It would get into the processing sector and possibly into the feedlot, but there's no guarantee that it would get back to the farm gate in any significant way.

We are looking at different ways of addressing the SRM situation and at maybe taking certain products away. We've actually been overqualified on SRM removal at this point, compared to our competitors, because we needed to get the border back open during BSE. We're still behind with the Japanese market. We are going back into the American market in a big way, but it is due to our traceability and our SRM removal that we have been allowed to do that, and that has taken some of the sting out.

We do have $130 million available—$80 million federally, $50 million provincially. That pot of money is available for SRM removal costs. There's a pilot project in Montreal in which they're taking those rendering products and making biodiesel out of them. There are other companies that are putting biodigesters in to develop power. I was in the Maple Leaf plant in Brandon, and they're putting in a biodigester to use up a lot of their.... They do 1,300 hogs an hour, 75,000 a week, and they have a lot of offcuts and offproduct that they are now rendering and turning into biodiesel. The offshoot from that is power to generate back into their whole plant. So it's a completely integrated situation.

Those are the types of things that I think are going to help us in the long run and that I think will do far more to stimulate the economy than that $50 million. There's really no program or plan for how that would be applied.

We are getting a lot better trade treatment from countries due to the processing sector we have here, due to the CFIA regulations. As tough as they are to bear right now, you know, in the long run, they will pay off for us.