Agriculture Committee on April 30th, 2009

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Touché.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming in.

In terms of renewable fuels, we'd sort of had an understanding, from a round table we'd had with some agriculture folks, about the renewable fuel issue of the cellulose, the refuse.

Are you familiar with studies that have been done through Agriculture Canada--or other organizations that I'm not sure of--in terms of the impact that might have as you remove the refuse, or a certain amount of it, working in collaboration, I guess, with these organizations? What negative impact is there, if there is any, in terms of soil degradation?

[Jeff Passmore]

Actually, you probably should ask the fellow sitting immediately to your left. He'll have the answer as well as I have.

Fundamentally, we would never intend to remove.... For example, in western Canada you have clay soil zones in the southern part, brown soil zones as you head north, and then black soil zones that run from Brandon up through Saskatoon and off through Edmonton and up toward the northwest.

Those are the areas where one is looking at removing straw, where farmers actually have a problem getting rid of the straw. Plowing it back under is sometimes not the best answer. Indeed, farmers are trying to move more and more toward so-called low-till or no-till agriculture, where they actually don't have to plow it back under and can save fuel that way.

Furthermore, we don't pretend to know more about land husbandry than farmers do. For example, we would go to you as a farmer, or indeed the 600 farmers.... Going back to Madam Bonsant's question, about whether we contract directly with suppliers, it's the same in the cellulosic ethanol industry. We have contracts with 600 farmers to supply us with straw.

What we found out was that in a given straw basin, about 50% of the farmers want to part with about 50% of their material. We're removing about 25% of the material in any straw basin. The rest is there for soil nutrient value.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I'm from Ontario, and there are different soil types there that would be impacted differently by the amount--more so, likely, from our perspective, on the corn side.

Mr. Haig, you raised the issue around algae as the next generation. I find that quite an interesting one. Actually, I've had some conversations around how that might actually impact particularly the livestock industry. Maybe you can help me understand whether there's been any research and where you're at with that, especially with large operations that have a great source of manure in liquid tanks.

Is there any option in which that product as an algae can be grown, or harvested, or left remaining with the product in the tank of a liquid that now doesn't have...or that has grown it but still has the nutrients, in fact, to be a fertilizer resource? Is there anything in the books on that?

[Tim Haig]

It's unbelievable matter. In fact, clean coal has one of the biggest applications of algae. They want to take flue gases, bubble it through algae beds, and clean up coal. Flue gases clean it up probably by 40% to 50% on the GHG. So that's huge.

When you're talking about manure waste, though, sir, you're going back to.... We're not professing that it's only going to be ethanol and biodiesel getting in the fuel pool. Another one is methanol. One of the highest and best uses of manure--I grew up on a dairy farm--is methane, turning it into methanol, and putting it in your car and your flex-fuel vehicles too. So it's probably the better use as far as that goes.

Again, we're mixing the two platforms. The diesel platform is really about the 50% algae. The balance, interestingly enough, is proteins and some starch. The starch could make its way back into the ethanol program and the proteins would make it back into feed.

So there's a huge application of this, and I'm very encouraged. We're spending a lot on it. It's very encouraging.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I know of one where that's sort of been the case.

I'm intrigued by the comment about the bio-economy, especially the kinds of biomass, other than for feedstock, that will be used for plastics, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. I think that is an incredible growth area. I'm interested to know where that is in terms of agriculture.

[Tim Haig]

I think it's the idea of cellulose; the remaining lignin that's left is put into fibre boards.

It's interesting. In 1970, one of the sheiks said that petroleum is far too valuable to burn because of all the things you could do with it. In fact biodiesel and renewable fuels are the same. We're making a carbon chain that could go into whatever; the applications are endless once you make these carbon chains.

[Jeff Passmore]

I promise not to give you a long lesson in chemistry, but once you've taken the cellulose out of straw and turned it into glucose, i.e., sugar, you don't have to ferment and distill it to make alcohol; you can turn it into polymers to make plastics. That's the bio-economy we're talking about.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

The committee has some business we have to tend to.

I'd like to thank all of you for coming today. I think you've been very informative.

[Gordon Quaiattini]

Mr. Chairman, there was a request for some information. If, through your clerk, there's anything else the committee was looking for from the association, we'd be more than happy to provide it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

We'd appreciate if you would get that to the clerk. Thanks again.

For the committee, we have a budget motion that was passed at the subcommittee on food safety yesterday. That motion has to be ratified by the main committee.

Would somebody care to read the motion so that we can move it?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

You're talking about the budget, right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes.

Is somebody willing to move the motion?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I'm willing to move it.

I move that the budget of $102,800 for the Subcommittee on Food Safety be passed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

(Motion agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Is there another motion, or notice of motion?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Where are we?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

We just dealt with the motion for the subcommittee.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

We increased the amount to $202,000.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

That was on the budget?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Yes, it's done.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Were we not in a recess for ten minutes, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

There was no recess.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Oh, for heaven's sake. Well, we can always amend it later, if we need to.

[An hon. member]

What the hell?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm always getting the point that we're very pressed for time here.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Chair, I would like to put forward a notice of motion.

Given the discussion we had at the last meeting, I'm going to seek the unanimous consent of the committee. Maybe we can deal with this motion today, and I'll explain why. I know I need unanimous consent.

Do I have consent to hand this out so you can read it?

This is moving Mr. Easter's previous motion about wanting to pursue the COOL investigation further forward. Mr. Easter's motion was to bring U.S. officials here. However, I think we could gain a lot more by going there. We will have better access to more people, and I think we'll be able to make our point quite forcefully in Washington.

I'll read it, Mr. Chair. Although I've handed it out, I'd like to get it on the record. My motion reads:

That due to the impact Country of Origin Labelling is having on the Canadian livestock sector, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food should travel to Washington to meet with U.S. decision-makers, legislators and stakeholders.

The reason I'm asking for unanimous consent is so that we can discuss and perhaps even vote on it today. I think we'll probably find we're in favour of this, given how much we want to help the livestock sector. Secondly, the sooner we're able to organize this, the better. We have a break week coming up, and that might be an opportune time to go.