Agriculture Committee on Oct. 29th, 2009

[Ken Clancy]

Yes, and from last fall it went from probably about $1,100 a tonne down to $350 a tonne.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Your time has expired, Mr. Hoback.

Mr. Lemieux, five minutes.

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

Thank you.

I just had a question about the sheep market. Unfortunately, I wasn't here for the beginning of your presentation, but certainly my experience, in talking with farmers of different livestock commodities, is that the marketplace plays a key role in the success of farmers. I'm just wondering if I could ask for your comments or your opinion on some of the initiatives we've taken to open foreign markets for sheep.

For example, I think Minister Ritz was in Russia, very successfully on the beef side but also on the sheep side; the sheep were actually their own category. I believe it's expected that this increased foreign market opportunity will generate approximately $8 million for sheep farmers over the next three years. I see that as encouraging.

I wanted to know your thoughts on that.

[Jennifer MacTavish]

It's very encouraging. We were very happy to get access to the Russian market. We had been working on our export certificates with them for three years, so it's a definite shot in the arm, if you will, for the industry.

But I'm going to fall back on my comment that our biggest market is Mexico. Mexico imported, a couple of years ago, 31,000 commercial ewes out of New Zealand, 4,000 bred ewes out of New Zealand. Two weeks before BSE, they were in Canada looking for Canadian ewes. The border closed and we couldn't supply that demand. We need to regain access to that market. It's one of our biggest markets. It's easy for us to get there if we can just get through the U.S., so we need the U.S. to open its market first.

So while we really do appreciate getting access to the Russian markets, and we really want to start looking at other international markets, the fact remains that our largest market has been closed to us for six years.

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

As you know, we take that situation very seriously, particularly as it pertains to livestock. There certainly have been tremendous initiatives put forward by Minister Day, by Minister Ritz, and by the Prime Minister himself, when he's met with the President. Even our committee travelled down to Washington to express our concerns certainly on country-of-origin labelling and the impact it's having on our Canadian livestock sector.

Are you able to tell the committee what kinds of initiatives your organization has undertaken in this regard and perhaps what sort of feedback you've received at your level?

[Jennifer MacTavish]

First and foremost, we have implemented a national identification program. It's been in place since January 1, 2004, and we're evolving that program to incorporate animal movement and full-scale traceability. It's frustrating for us, when we sit around a table with other commodity groups and representatives indicating that traceability and animal identification will guarantee us market access, because it's not true. We still don't have market access and we have animal identification.

One of the biggest issues we have is scrapie. The U.S. has basically said to us, “If you, as a Canadian industry, are serious about eradicating scrapie, we will keep you in our sandbox, but if you're not, we're cutting you out.” We need to go and find the prevalence of scrapie in Canada, because we still don't have a prevalence rate. We need to establish that prevalence rate and then build an eradication plan around that prevalence rate so that we can target a date to become OIE-certified scrapie free. From our perspective and the feedback we're getting out of the USDA, that is our number one stumbling block in regaining access to the market. We need scrapie surveillance, we need scrapie prevalence, and we need scrapie eradication.

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

Within your federation and the organizations that you work with, what sorts of things are you proposing in that regard?

[Jennifer MacTavish]

We have an application in right now to the AgriFlexibility fund to do a prevalence study. We have a flock certification program in place, and producer participation in that program has been expanding, because if they're on that program, they can actually bring in U.S. genetics, so there has been an increase in producer participation in that program. We have done a genotype program, because scrapie is genetically linked. We've gone in and genotyped a portion of our Canadian purebred flock so that we can identify what animals might be at higher risk of coming down with scrapie.

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

What kind of support are you getting from your producers for these types of initiatives?

[Jennifer MacTavish]

It's a growing support, because they recognize that they're going to have to participate if they're going to want to trade. As I indicated, we can now bring U.S. genetics, live animals from the U.S., into Canada if a Canadian producer is on that flocks certification program, but we still can't export.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

To our witnesses, thank you again for coming here today.

We have a bit of committee business that we have to attend to.

I will make an observation for members. I thought having just a couple of groups here today allowed us to really get into it and hear some good testimony and get some good questions in. From time to time we get a lot witnesses and sometimes we have to jam them in. I think that sometimes we're actually hurting our cause, but it's something that does happen. It's just an observation.

Thanks again. We will let you go. We wish you all the best.

We have some motions....

Go ahead, Mr. Lemieux.

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

Mr. Chair, before we get into committee business, I wanted to give a notice of motion. I know we're going to end up talking about motions in a certain order. I have a notice of motion, which I will submit. I would like to advise the committee that I'll be putting forward a motion that states:

The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food expresses its support for the abolishment of the long-gun registry, Bill C-391, because the long-gun registry has created significant hardship for farmers and on the farming community; and that this be reported to the House.

Mr. Chair, I wanted to raise it at this meeting because there's debate going on in the House. As the agriculture committee, we're all interested in protecting the best interests of farmers. Certainly as individual MPs we have heard from farmers about the long-gun registry and the negative impact it has on them.

I'll hand this over to the clerk, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you. Will you send that in to the clerk?

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

Yes.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

I believe everybody has the motions. The first one is a motion by Mr. Shipley. Do you want to read it into the record?

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

It's a fairly straightforward motion, but it has a lot of outreach with respect to what this committee has been delving into. The motion reads:

That the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food study the future of farming with a particular focus on young farmers.

We've been studying competitive issues in agriculture for almost a year. One of the things that inevitably shows up is the number of farmers who are leaving the industry. How do we keep young farmers involved in the industry? What can we do through government policy to attract young farmers into the business? Moreover, what can we do to help those farmers who became part of the industry through a family farm?

We have to be clear. When we say “family farms”, there is often a misconception of what a family farm is. A number of years ago, we would have thought of a family farm as a farm with maybe 300 acres, some dairy cattle, and some beef cattle or swine.

I was in purebred Holsteins and dairy. The milk truck used to go along, and about every third farm the milk truck would stop, because there was a dairy farm. Now I would have to drive for 20 minutes or so to find a dairy farm. There is not less production; there is just more production with fewer animals on more efficient farms.

Today, family farms are larger, with a greater number of acres and more cattle. Most of these farms, because of tax reasons, have become incorporated. I don't want to leave the impression that when we talk about “family farms” I want to step back 30 years. In fact, I want to talk about modern family farms and create a vision of what we can do for them today.

What can we do to make the industry more attractive and keep it viable for someone who wants to transition into it or stay in it? We've done something through the Growing Forward program with the Canadian Agricultural Loans Act, which is $1 billion over five years. This will assist young farmers who did not have access to funding before.

As for corporate taxes, the corporate tax structure has changed a bit, but I don't know if it's the right change. I don't know if there was enough change. These young farmers are often part of a larger corporation with their mum and dad involved. Is this something we should be looking at?

When you transfer land, you're talking about large assets. The capital gains exemption has been increased. It's moved from $500,000 to $750,000. But when we look ahead to transitioning those farms to beginning farmers, should we be discussing the capital gains exemption? Is this something that would benefit young farmers? Is there something we talk about that we've done in industry and manufacturing, for example?

When we went into the start of the recession we looked at when they met the capital cost allowances. As we were trying to instigate the economy, the industry was saying that they had these large expenditures for capital, and this is for high technology and equipment, but they didn't have the accelerated capital cost allowance in front of them that gave them the value, or at least the competitive edge, that they needed in comparison to some of their counterparts. We have a capital cost allowance schedule that was changed. It was at a higher rate and it was moved back.

I'm wondering if there's some way of discussing if that would have some value in terms of what young farmers may be able to move ahead with. Again, there's always a lot of discussion around supply management, and it came from that. It is a critical and important industry within Canada.

We've seen that DFO, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, have taken some steps. Being in the dairy industry, they've taken some steps to help initiate young farmers, or beginner farmers, to get into the industry in terms of the allotment of quota, and the purchasing ability of it, and giving them some financial breaks in terms of being able to get into the industry, because it is such a significant industry. We have a number of things that have happened.

I was happy to hear Jennifer MacTavish, who is from the sheep industry, say today that their president is a young person of 30-some years old. Those are the individuals we need to keep bringing into our industry.

Mr. Chair, I would ask that we consider this motion as one to move ahead on.

In terms of our competition, I'm looking forward to this report getting done so that we can use some of the initiatives coming out of there. We may be able to focus on some of those people and have them come back in terms of how we're going to be able to create even more enthusiasm for beginner farms getting into agriculture.

Mr. Chairman, I'll leave that as a bit of a preamble to the discussion around the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

I have five speakers on the list. I would have thought that based on past comments this one would have been fairly simple.

Mr. Bellavance.

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

One cannot be against apple pie. However, my criticism with regard to the motions from my colleagues of the Conservative Party — this is not the first time we have seen this — is that because they are so broad, they will take up all of the Committee's time if we accept to tackle such studies.

As a matter of fact, it is somewhat similar to the competitiveness issue. We are still working on it, and we are going to have a very thick report.

It interests everyone and we all have good ideas to bring forward. However, if there were not problems at present with agriculture, this is the type of issue that we should study as a priority.

But given that right now — and to me the present is more important than the future as far as agriculture is concerned — there are serious problems, this is what we should be studying before studying the future of agriculture, particularly for young farmers.

One cannot be opposed to this type of motion, one cannot be opposed to the study of what is coming, of what our vision for agriculture should be, especially for young people.

However, right now, there is a whole stack of problems that we must study, and it is our duty to look into these matters. I do not need any reminders from you with regard to the situation of the hog industry and the beef industry — this whole program review issue, that has been put forward by the government, how things work at present, in order to determine if producers are benefiting from this or not.

I would like to put a question to my colleague who has presented the motion, Mr. Shipley.

Mr. Shipley, is it your wish to redo the Agriculture Policy Framework? You are aware that your government has adopted an agriculture policy framework for the next five years. It was my belief that this framework represented the government's vision for the next five years, including what should be done with regard to young farmers. What you are presenting to us amounts to saying that there is nothing and that you are going to try to put in place a vision.

Unless I am mistaken, there is presently in place an Agriculture Policy Framework for the next five years that was adopted by your government. My belief was that that was the vision and that we were moving in that direction.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I don't think so. We still have five minutes.

Mr. Atamanenko, you're next.

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

I'd like to thank you, Bev, for bringing this up. However, I have some concerns, and I'll share them with you. As André said, I think this is a very broad umbrella for a committee study. I'm concerned. Once we finish this series, what we have, and after Christmas and all of the spring, going right up to June, talking about the future of farming..... I would like to see it limited to a set period of time, like a month, for example, and zero in on some specific topics under that. I believe that one of the major stumbling blocks to the future of farming is farm income, and I think until that problem is seriously addressed and solved, there's no future.

If we can somehow amend the motion--in other words, have a more specific set-up, a period of time, a maximum period of time, zero in on some specific topics, say, one week on income, one week on young farmers, just zero it in and tighten it up--I think it could be a really good study. We've spent a long time on competition, and I think a lot of things are interwoven. So I would like to see this done, but with specific topics so that we can finish that and move on. I would suggest a maximum of one month to do this.

I would just like to throw that out to my fellow committee members.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

On that, Alex, as far as a timeline is concerned, that's certainly discussion for the committee, and I'm not going to speak on that.

As far as the specific subjects within that go, that would I think probably be a precedent. For example, competitiveness, yes, is wide-ranging, but there was never at the start of it...and I'm just using it because it's a recent example. There was nothing ever put in there except when it came to the members submitting their different witness lists. The categories within that sorted themselves out.

My observation would be that as the witnesses come in, the committee can decide its own fate and destiny, so you can basically decide that as you go along. It's just a comment more than anything.

It is 5:15, and at the start of the meeting I stated that the meeting would be over. It would be my suggestion at the next meeting that we move on to the same speakers' list when we move into business and go from there.

This meeting is adjourned until Tuesday, November 3.