Agriculture Committee on Nov. 17th, 2009

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon, everybody. As discussed before, we're going to try to do motions on Tuesday up front, but we're only going to allocate an hour to it because we have witnesses here coming in at 4:30 p.m. Many of you probably have a list of various motions that we have on deck. Does everybody have a list of those motions?

We have an order here. Is Bev Shipley here?

Bev, we already discussed your motion on the young farmers. There was some discussion on it, so I'm going to open it up for discussion. Did you want to start off on it again?

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

I'll just keep it really brief, Mr. Chairman.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Oh, I'm sorry.

Before we get into motions--it's my mistake, committee--we have to deal with budgets. We have two budgets that we have to approve. Is everybody familiar with the two budgets? One budget is $9,100 dealing with the crisis in the hog industry, and the other one is $10,600 dealing with program review. I guess we vote on them separately.

Are there any questions on the first one?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

How much is that, Mr. Chair?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

It's $9,100. I don't think I have the breakdown here. Does everybody have the breakdown of where that comes from?

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

I have it down in number two.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Is everybody okay with that?

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

Could you please explain it? Are these witnesses already coming, or are they going to come?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

The clerk will explain that.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Isabelle Duford]

For the program review, these are for the witnesses who have been invited to appear, so that's for the meetings to come.

In terms of the budget for the hog crisis, those are witnesses who have appeared, so that's to recover the cost. Since we hadn't had a chance to adopt the budget for that meeting, we're doing it at this time.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Are there any more questions on the money for the hog sector? Apparently we've already done the meeting; we're just trying to pay for it, I guess.

Brian.

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

That's fine, Mr. Chair. We've all got this $9,100 and $9,100. We all got the crisis in the hog industry; we didn't get the second one. We got two of the same.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

So you have the one on the hogs, though, do you? You just don't have the other one?

Is everybody okay with that? I don't know if we need to bring it to a vote. Unless there's anybody who has a problem with it, we'll figure it's unanimous that we agree on that one.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

The second one is on the program review. That's the one that's coming up, I guess. Are there any questions on that one?

No questions? It's straightforward? Unless there's any problem with it, we'll just figure it's passed unanimously. Okay?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Okay, back to the motions.

Mr. Shipley, you have the floor to speak on your motion.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won't go over a lot of the stuff that I did last time.

I talked to my colleagues, and one of the things that came up during the discussion is that it seemed pretty open and maybe too broad, and was there an opportunity to maybe streamline and focus it, Mr. Chairman, just a little more? The other part of the question was, what sort of timeline, in terms of the description of the motion, were you looking at? I'll leave that to some open discussion, but if we were to have six or seven weeks of discussion on that study, that would give us a full venue to bring in appropriate witnesses. I'm open to discussion around the time and the number of meetings. I think it's one we could start, with a goal of six or seven weeks. At the end of it, you would have it wrapped up and then we could have a report on it, Mr. Chairman.

The motion does say that the standing committee focus on the study of the future of farming with a particular focus on young farmers. Maybe to help in terms of some of the discussion that came out in the last meeting, I could propose some sort of friendly amendment that may help bring it around a little bit. And I would propose this as a friendly amendment, Mr. Chair:

That the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada study government and industry initiatives around the future of farming, primarily focusing on young farmers and their involvement in agriculture.

I leave that for comments and discussion, Mr. Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Does everybody understand the amendment? Is there any comment on it?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Could you read that again?

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

Mr. Chair, I'll read it again:

That the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada study government and industry initiatives

--so both the government and the industry initiatives--

around the future of farming, primarily focusing on young farmers and their involvement in agriculture.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Do we have an amendment to his motion?

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

It would certainly have to be in French and English, but I was just proposing that a friendly amendment be added. It would be based on the discussion--

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

He can amend his own motion if there's unanimous consent, right?

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

That is exactly what I was going to ask you. As a general rule, in order to amend his own amendment, he needs the Committee's unanimous consent. So, I am waiting for you to ask whether there is unanimous consent, Mr. Chairman.