Agriculture Committee on June 11th, 2009

[Colleen Ross]

I don't understand what you mean by “compete”. How are we limiting our ability to compete? We've been competing since we signed on to NAFTA and the free trade agreements and WTO. We've been competing rabidly for decades, but are we any better off? Are we any healthier as a society? Are farmers in this country any better off?

I think we've done a really good job at embracing technologies, both good and bad technologies, and being very competitive on the global market, but are we any better off? Are we any further ahead? Are citizens of the world any healthier? We see incredible amounts of violence and hunger and poverty. We had a world food crisis last year, and now we're just going to throw more technologies after it? I think we need to get back to basics and start growing food that people actually want to eat, instead of imposing inappropriate technologies upon society.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Valeriote.

We will now move to Mr. Bellavance for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank you all for your testimony.

Ms. Gravel, you made some very interesting remarks that raise questions in my mind about the decisions that governments make at any level. A government will often talk from both sides of its mouth at the same time. They want to foster competition, to make sure that consumers have good products, that producers get good prices and so forth. At the same time, they adopt legislation or regulations full of loopholes that clearly put spokes in the wheels of producers, of the industries and of the consumers.

What you just said about organic certification is an obvious example of this. I feel that the same applies to the "Product of Canada" claim. The committee studied the matter and determined that for a product to be labelled "Product of Canada", 85% of the content of that food product has to be Canadian. The government said that it had carried out wide consultation before setting the percentage at 98%. Today, there is no one left who can qualify for the "Product of Canada" label. I do not want to go further into this matter, but I think that it does present an interesting parallel.

You emphasized the fact that this affects the credibility of the organic industry in Canada and Quebec. Moreover, how can we be sure that the products we buy are really organic, and that the certification is properly carried out? Ultimately, this has to do with consumer confidence. When she sees the logo, she decides to buy the product because it is certified organic.

I put a question to the House of Commons last April 28. The Minister of State for Agriculture answered my question. I do not know what the Minister of Agriculture thinks of it, because he was not the one who answered me. I asked him to tell me about the regulations concerning foreign products that can end up on our shelves and have the same logo as the products that are certified in Canada, but that have been certified according to the standards of some other country, like South Korea, for instance. He answered me, and I quote:

[...] it is important to have standards that are aligned with the international system. We must have consistent standards in our respective countries. The ISO 17011 standard will be implemented to ensure that everyone knows where we are headed in this matter.

Are you comfortable with this answer?

[France Gravel]

Not really. The ISO is one thing and standards are another thing. The ISO provides standards for authorizing certification bodies to do their work. Thus, certification bodies must follow certain procedures in doing their work. Standards, on the other hand, are what the company, for example Ms. Ross, must observe when she is working on the farm. These are two completely different things. Merely having ISO certification does not mean that the standards are the same as those in other countries. In fact, this is only half an answer.

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

I have nothing against the fact that India or any other country could have its own benchmarks for certifying organic products, but I see a problem when such products show up on our shelves and the standards that were applied to them were not Canadian standards. That is one of the problems that these regulations raise.

[Julie Belzile, Regulatory Affairs Advisor, Filière biologique du Québec]

Perhaps I can answer that question. This regulation is a disaster because there are two ways of importing a product into Canada. The first way consists in asking the producer outside of Canada to respect all the standards and to be certified by an accredited certification body in Canada that applies Canadian standards. We know that this will not happen very frequently on a worldwide basis, because we only have a small market. Therefore, we need some flexibility as far as imports are concerned.

The second way of importing a product into Canada consists in negotiating equivalency agreements with foreign countries. On Monday, we learned that Canada will probably announce the signing of an equivalency agreement with the U.S.A. Now, the content of this agreement is raising serious concerns. If we do not sign an agreement with the U.S.A., there will be almost no products left that could come into Canada, and we do not want that.

From the outset, we have been asking that the regulations provide a mechanism whereby we can unilaterally evaluate whether a standard or a system of benchmarks are acceptable to us, just as the Europeans and the Americans do. There is some urgency here, because the regulations and the file we tabled before the European Union in 2006 were so bad—and they still are just as bad—that the Europeans do not even want to speak to us anymore. The Canada Organic Office has been sending out e-mails and negotiating with Europe. It did not even receive an acknowledgement of receipt, let alone an answer; the dialogue is broken off.

Personally, this is beyond me. The flexibility in monitoring imports that we asked for was not all that complicated to implement. It was very simple. The request was made well in advance, since we became aware of the new provisions regarding imports that were proposed. These provisions were submitted to the organic industry in September 2008. There were some in camera meetings and we met several times with people from the agency. They refused to grant our request and we are still wondering why.

This will create problems for us when we import organic products. It puts us in a very weak negotiating position with the Americans. The American standards pose certain problems for certain kinds of products. All the directors of provincial associations in the rest of Canada support our position in this matter, as well as our position with regard to export products. Canadian producers and processors are clearly aware of the problems that these regulations will create for them.

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

For the Europeans—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm sorry, André, but your time has expired. You can come back to it.

Mr. Atamanenko, for seven minutes.

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

Good morning. Thank you for coming and for testifying before us.

Dwight, thanks again, also, for dropping in to see me before this.

Of course, Colleen and Glenn, it's always great to see you folks.

Dwight, I have a quick question for you. You're a feedlot operator. What's your opinion of captive supply, and should we, in effect, do away with it, as the Americans are trying to do?

[Dwight Foster]

I think my colleagues addressed that very clearly.

We don't have many slaughter facilities left in Canada, Alex. There's one really big one in Ontario, and there are two in Alberta. That is the position the United States has taken. I think there are some loopholes they can get through. They are able to own cattle. But for the most part, the intent is that it's producers that own the cattle down there. That's why you see that the large facility in Guelph is now owned by an American company. We know that they bring cattle in from the Midwest and slaughter them in Canada and then send them back--in days gone by--to the U.S. market. That's the way they get around that.

Would I like to see it different in Canada? Definitely. Let's face it, it's the farmers that really should own the cattle, right? We had a really good example of how they can control price, because they're huge corporations.

I hope that answers your question.

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

Thank you.

I guess in this day and age we seem to believe that the only way to get out of this impasse is to open up new markets. The government is doing that, and that's a good thing, but at the same time, if folks are losing money, we can start doing something. Perhaps we should be going in that direction in regard to captive supply, especially if our trading partners are doing that. Hopefully, as a committee, we'll have a chance to look at that and study that issue in the fall.

Food sovereignty is a topic that's coming up a lot these days. I'm in the process of doing this tour across the country as we try to put together a report that my party will present to our government in regard to a national food policy. It's the whole idea of control over food versus trade, how we do both, and how we can still be a trading nation and yet have control over our food supply. As an example, I spent some time in Atlantic Canada just a few weeks ago, and the beef producers there are not producing enough to feed Atlantic Canada. They're losing money, but we can't sort of captivate that market there because of the free flow of beef.

Dwight, you and I talked a bit about this thing called supply management and whether it is applicable to the beef industry. As we look at being able to feed ourselves, we have to look at this whole idea of whether we can have control of our feed supply. So I'd like some comments on that.

Third, as we work towards this, we're now faced with the possibility of having genetically modified alfalfa released into the environment. It has been approved by Health Canada and Environment Canada, and it's just awaiting registration. We have the push by the biotech industry to bring in genetically modified wheat. I'm being told that if we do that, for example, our markets will suffer, because there won't be as many buyers for Canadian wheat. There's the problem of contamination with alfalfa. The Saskatchewan Organic Directorate, for example, came out strongly against this. Should we be putting a stop to further genetically modified organisms in our country to protect our markets and also to protect the organic food industry?

Those are my questions. Maybe we can just start and see if we have time to answer them in seven minutes.

Thank you.

[Colleen Ross]

There doesn't appear to be any other takers, so I'll jump in.

I was in Mali in 2007, when the first international food sovereignty forum was held in a place called Sélingué, about three hours outside of Bamako. I was a part of that forum and I was on the drafting committee for the final international declaration. There were over 500 people there from about 120 countries, and this was an international consensus document. That in itself is quite a feat, to get consensus when you have 500 people there who are fisherfolk, peasants, big farmers, small farmers, and women, and youth, altogether speaking so many languages. To come up with a consensus document is a wonderful testament to a civilized process in determining what our food systems need to look like.

I would say that a country that is not food sovereign is not a sovereign country and is not a safe country. As a farmer and a consumer, I think we all need to be concerned. I'm certainly concerned about food sovereignty in this country.

I'm one of those people who go into a grocery store and look at where food has come from. It dismays me to see the way we have strawberries from California in February and sweet corn from California in February and March. Before we can even cut our asparagus, we have it from Mexico and Guatemala. We've lost our food culture. We've lost waiting for that first flush of seasonal produce to come into our markets. Our grocery store shelves are laden with peaches and nectarines already, coming from southern U.S.A., instead of waiting for our season. When it comes from Niagara or the Okanagan, it's not special anymore. I think it is of real concern.

Do we need more innovation and technology in our food? I've never heard anybody say, “Boy, I wish this was genetically modified”, or “I wish this were another food with novel traits”. I have to ask again, who is paying and who is profiting? We already have glyphosate resistance in the countryside, where I farm today, and I know Glenn grows GE canola and it works for him in his rotation. But do we need more of it?

There is a three-way rotation in my community and many parts of Ontario. Dwight might find this too. We grow wheat. We grow winter wheat and spring wheat. We grow soybeans. We don't grow corn anymore; we've taken another rotation. I'm an organic farmer, but for my conventional neighbours, are they going to grow Roundup Ready corn, then Roundup Ready soybeans, then Roundup Ready wheat? How do they get rid of the volunteers? You can't get rid of volunteer Roundup Ready corn using Roundup. You have to use another herbicide, and whether you're a conventional farmer or an organic farmer, there is no place in our rotations for another glyphosate-resistant crop.

I am not in favour of it, and it's hard. What I'm asking you to do today I know is a challenge, because we've gone so far down the road in our high-technology globalized industrial food system that we need to ratchet back. For instance, Mr. Valeriote, you mentioned that we're going to have fewer farmers in this country with bigger farms, more industrialized, but there is a movement in this country of young people who are starting to farm again. They're recognizing the opportunity that we have in this country from people in this country who are saying they don't want any more of this crap, that they want to buy food that is grown in their community, or at least in our province or in our country, and they want to know how it's grown and they want to know who those farmers are. There is a movement of young people coming back to the land.

I encourage you to look into something called the Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training, CRAFT. It is farmers like me who are opening up our farms to young people. I have a young master's of engineering fellow who is working for an engineering firm here in Ottawa who spends two days on my farm--he's there today working on my farm--because he wants to learn how to farm. He wants to be a farmer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Ms. Ross. We can come back to that.

Thank you, Mr. Atamanenko.

Mr. Hoback, for seven minutes.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

It's very interesting to listen to you, Ms. Ross and Mr. Tait, and I want to welcome you here today. I'm glad you showed up.

I'm going to pick up on what you were saying about how consumers want to be in contact with the farmers. They want to know what's going on in their operations. They want to be able to touch, or at least to have an idea where the stuff comes from.

I get confused with NFU on their stance on the Canadian Wheat Board then, because we had a group of farmers in southern Saskatchewan a few years ago trying to get together to do that. They actually tried to create their own durum milling plant, so they could actually produce their own durum and sell it directly. Of course, that agency got in the way.

I assume then, if you're all in favour of getting that close connection to the farmer, you must be willing to ask that marketing regulatory board we have, that noose around our necks, to allow some flexibility or at least some guidance so that we can do that, would you not?

[Glenn Tait]

Randy, it's good to see you again.

I don't know if you remember the CIGI tour in Winnipeg. It was a wonderful tour of the Wheat Board offices, the Canadian International Grains Institute. We were there for four or five days. Unfortunately, while most of us were learning about what the Canadian Wheat Board does all over the world for the farmers of western Canada, Mr. Hoback was down in the boardroom somewhere trying to get those guys to commit suicide.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Actually, Mr. Chair, I take exception to that. I would like to point out that at that CIGI meeting, I was asked by the CWB to give the closing remarks, and I did compliment them on CIGI and the role they serve in the marketplace, and for him to suggest something else is not fair. I wish he'd retract that.

[Glenn Tait]

I'm sorry, I was not at those meetings. I understood that was your intention, to try to open up the Wheat Board to get it to back off its regulations that protect Canadian farmers.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

What I'm asking you here is this. When farmers in Canada—and your colleague above you, Nettie Wiebe, was saying the same thing—want to get connected to the end-user, how can you have something like the Canadian Wheat Board, this big barrier that wants to dump it all in one big pit, and do that? How can you do that? I can't do that right now. It's impossible for me to do that. If I wanted to get together with you and say we're going to offer Randy and Glenn canola, we can do that. But if I wanted to get together and offer Randy and Glenn bread or flour, I can't do that.

So how do I accomplish what you want us to do with that in place?

[Glenn Tait]

The Canadian Wheat Board works in the best interests of all farmers, not just separate little bits and pieces, and they will not fraction up their accounts to make farmers compete against each other. This is basically why we're here today, to talk about competitiveness. I don't want to compete with other farmers. I want to compete as a nation, as a whole. When those products are pooled, we hold the rest of the world at ransom. We've got the best bread wheat in the world. We trade most of the durum in the world. If that's all in one pile, you have to come through the Canadian Wheat Board to get it, and we get more money.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Actually, I disagree with that, and there are many reports that disagree with it, but that's just one question I had with the NFU on this.

You talked about corporate gouging. Can you present proof? You go around and you talk about it, and you accuse it, so give us proof, because we're looking for it.

[Glenn Tait]

It's pretty damn easy to find. The most obvious proof is in the fertilizer industry. The price of fertilizer should be one reasonable margin of profit above the price of your inputs--natural gas and...well, air is free, but that's another constituent of nitrogen fertilizer. But if you look at the history of the price of fertilizer over time, you'll see that it does follow the price of inputs for a while, until the price of grain goes up. It immediately follows the price of grain. We've got quotes in this report—I guess you didn't read it—from Agrium and from Yara, the self-described world's largest fertilizer company, that say “Nitrogen prices follow grain prices” and “Fertilizer prices [are] linked to grain prices”, not the costs of the inputs. They charge the maximum that the market will bear.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Yes. Actually, we've had Agrium, and we've actually had the fertilizer industry there, and we're asking the Competition Bureau to investigate that. I'm not sure if you're aware of that.

But you make accusations against Monsanto, against Dow, against all these other big corporate farmers. Give us the proof, please.

[Glenn Tait]

Monsanto, okay. I use Roundup Ready canola from Monsanto. It used to be a $15-an-acre technology use agreement, now it's a little higher than that if I want to follow the recommended seed rates, because they moved off a per-acre basis onto a per-pound basis, so I'm paying closer to $18 an acre, I think. The price was arbitrarily set at $15 per acre, so that it is just marginally cheaper than using a different method, using regular canola with your other types of herbicide to control weeds in the canola. You've got that $1 or $2 per acre profit margin that wants to make you choose their variety of canola over the other ones. That's why it was set at $15. It's not to make their money back for their research. They did that many years ago.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

But you've also got InVigor varieties; you've got other varieties you can choose. InVigor is another variety that's getting tremendously high yields. In fact, in a lot of the studies it showed higher yields than the Monsanto varieties. Again, there's competition there, and you can choose whether you want to utilize this technology.

You also have to appreciate the fact that this technology costs money to bring to the marketplace. Who pays for that? If you don't want to use the technology—

[Glenn Tait]

I've addressed that. They've made that research money back on Roundup Ready varieties years ago. Yes, we've got some choice, but the world is getting closer to a contractual obligation system rather than free enterprise and free choice. Everything is getting linked together. You must pick our seed, and if you do pick our seed, you have to use our chemical, you have to sell it back to this fertilizer company, and we will sell to that particular producer.