Evidence of meeting #42 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was money.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Were you given an explanation for this change?
Executive Director, Agricultural Adaptation Council
What we were told is that grants are not appropriate wherever funding is passed on to recipients to be then further disbursed to one or more entities; this is what we were told. As a third party delivery agent, it was not appropriate for us to receive money as a grant and then hand it out again as a grant. That's how it was explained to us.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Would it be possible for you to talk about, without using specific names, a group or an individual who would have received grants or assistance under the old way and under the new way, so that I can understand the difference? You're saying it's more complicated. How is it more complicated? Just give us an idea.
Executive Director, Agricultural Adaptation Council
Just before this meeting, I was talking about the tender fruit industry. To give an example, we would do a pear research initiative under our old program, which we received as a grant. This actual research project has been going on for close to nine years. Pear research in the Niagara region takes time. There are changes in the weather and there are changes in researchers. Because we received our money as a grant, we weren't putting pressure on them to get the research done by March 31.
The reality is now that if the tender fruit board applies to us under this new program, we are going to basically tell them that they have to have their project done in three years; therefore, if they get to us in around 2011 or 2012, I'm going to tell them that they have nine months to do their project. So a lot of research projects, especially in the tender fruit industry, are going to have to get down to their projects immediately when the program opens, because near the end of the program we have a use-it-or-lose-it deadline.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
I met just yesterday with a representative of the forest industry, and they're saying that it has changed also for them. They have pressure to spend money quickly over the short term. I know that it seems, in the case of some of the stimulus money, that the communities are feeling this.
Is there an idea that money has to be spent within a certain time; otherwise you don't have it?
Executive Director, Agricultural Adaptation Council
Absolutely. We have tremendous pressure, as Gord and Kim mentioned. The signing of the agreement was delayed. We just signed basically a week and a half ago. With that signing came a requirement that we have to basically commit $7.9 million before March 31, 2010, which is a huge amount of money for which to try to gather up projects and require matching funds. This is an incredible task. What we have found is that we are almost penalized, and our applicants are penalized. We have tremendous pressure, as a delivery agent, to get the money out the door and find projects to meet those needs. It's a phenomenal amount of money that we have to find projects for in a very short timeframe.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Obviously you've expressed your concerns to those responsible. What has been the response?
Executive Director, Agricultural Adaptation Council
Absolutely, we've had numerous letters back and forth for the past three or four months to the assistant deputy minister level at adaptation division. Their response is simply that this is the new directive they've been given, and we have to work within it.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
Are you optimistic or pessimistic as to the future of this?
Chairman, Agricultural Adaptation Council
We try to work with them on the program, because there's a national program alongside that's administered by the adaptation division in Ottawa, and then each of the provinces and the north have their own councils and their own pot of money. Given that we've been doing business with all of our clients for a long time, once we can explain to them the process—and the rules, now that we have them—we're hopeful that we can.
The biggest downfall is that this is a program that should have started on April 1. They have front-loaded the first year of a five-year program; we're now in November, and we have to explain the rules and regulations to our clients and try to expend a huge sum of money in the next few months. Unfortunately, there will be probably be money left on the table at the end of the day.
So that is the biggest disappointment. We've lost a lot of flexibility that we had under the previous program.
Conservative
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I thank the witnesses for coming forward.
Unfortunately, in five minutes I won't get a chance to talk about all the good points that I thought I heard and some of the things we should definitely look into, such as costing of the program and how much it costs to administer. I thought that was an excellent point that we should be looking into further.
But as I sit here, it's like a reminder of all the oldies but goodies. Ms. Stiles, you talked about some pertinent things that make it more difficult for your organization, when receiving grants, to redistribute to other organizations. But I think everybody around the table knows why Treasury Board had to change those guidelines: it's because of the sponsorship scandal under the former Liberal government. We found that these things needed to be changed because sometimes they weren't being....
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
No, they weren't doorknobs: it was cash that your party admitted to stealing.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. That had better be withdrawn from the record, because nobody was charged with stealing and nobody in the Liberal Party was charged with stealing.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
I said the party, and the party didn't admit that funds were missing.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
The party was not charged with stealing. There may have been a few crooks in the system; Chrétien said they should be arrested and thrown in jail, and that's what happened.
Conservative
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Let's get to agriculture.
Just for clarification, when we're talking about changes to the grants, it means anything over $100,000, correct?
Executive Director, Agricultural Adaptation Council
No, it doesn't, because our program, the program we're talking about, is close to $28 million. We do have requirements for certain projects. If they exceed $100,000, then I guess they're entitled to a repayable grant, or what we would call a loan, for the for-profit organizations. That threshold is what that's referring to.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
We're talking about these programs, and throughout the government there are tonnes of programs. There are some good programs out there, such as the stimulus. We've had a lot of compliments on that. We have some programs that definitely need to be a living charter. They definitely need to be adapted, to be frank.
We've had the minister here, and he said himself that if changes need to be made to the programs, we need to sit down and talk to industry and find ways to make these changes. I definitely think he's open to changes. Is that not the impression that you've had in your discussions?
President, Ontario Agri-Food Technologies
I believe people are trying in good conscience to make positive change. I do emphasize, as I did, that there are a number of positive changes, but there's actually regression too, so it's a two-way street right now.
I think it's great and wonderful when we have single accountability, with the province and the feds working together, and that's the first time we've had that.
I know there are different components to the AgriFlex program, but I have major concerns for our food processing industry right now because of the U.S.-Canadian dollar differential. We identified that early, and it was handled. I give full credit to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for that happening. In fact, I came up to say thank you on behalf of our food companies.
Yes, there are all kinds of good and bad, and everybody tries to do their best, but somewhere we need to sit down to discuss something as simple as whether we can have a 45-working-day decision time. I just don't understand. An application lands, and we have to get an application decision back to our applicants within six weeks. We work with them all along, so they know. They say that now we can't do that, because it has to go up through a couple of layers in the adaptation council.
So let's all work together. I want to emphasize that there have been many good things, but I see some regression coming back. I agree with you. Excuse me when I say this, but it's Gomerized. We're overwhelmed in looking at process, rather than actually getting the money out the door and making it happen.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
Then you agree that changes need to be made, but you'd rather work with it than, say, the gun registry, which we'd rather just throw out.
President, Ontario Agri-Food Technologies
I think we all want to work positively. My hope is that we will all work together, because at the end of the day, we all want to see our farmers being successful. We have to make sure they have customers for their products, and the closer you get to having Mr. Lemieux, for example, as part of the decision-making, rather than somebody senior in agriculture who's never really been on a hog farm, the more he can participate and the better it's going to be.
Conservative
Brian Storseth Conservative Westlock—St. Paul, AB
I'm sure my time is going to be coming up, but rather than asking for the one thing you'd like to see changed, if you have a list of changes that you'd like to see, I'll ask you to submit it in writing to the committee so that we could have it for our draft report at the end.
