Evidence of meeting #36 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was amendment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
No, you don't have time.
We're going to André and then Alex and then Wayne.
Bloc
André Bellavance Bloc Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
I'll be brief because it's not worth having a big discussion about it.
Mr. Wayne Easter is not on the steering committee. Each of us is presenting the issues that we discussed with colleagues of our respective parties. I simply want to repeat what Alex just said. At the end of the steering committee meeting, he himself asked Larry if the Conservatives could add other issues to the agenda and if he felt that everything was okay. He said yes.
You have to attend a steering committee meeting to know that we never squabble. Everyone takes their turn. Everyone says that someone needs to chair that committee, but we don't really need anyone to. We talk among ourselves, we present our issues and we try to have them added to the agenda. It isn't very complicated.
Mr. Easter did not chair the steering committee. Some of the issues that I presented are on this agenda; the others are from Larry, Alex or Mark.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
Well, I was hoping that comment wouldn't come forward, but it did.
When Mr. Miller called me last week, he was very comfortable with this report, so I think we'll get through it.
Mr. Atamanenko.
NDP
Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC
If we go with November 23 and 30, then we have to decide whether we do what the steering committee suggested, in other words have one producer per party. Or do we want a producer and someone from an organization? Pierre had a valid point. We have to decide so we do it correctly.
The other thing I want to say is that we did our very best at the steering committee. We all came with suggestions and we left that committee in agreement. To address Brian's concerns, and others', we're trying to get something done here. We're in no sense undertaking some kind of feel-good study. We're here to see what will go on before Christmas. We want to tidy up.
We've all been hearing from producers. We want to zero in on some problems they're having, get those settled, and move on. We want to have a meeting on the up-and-coming Canada-European trade agreement and its implications for farmers. We want to start into the study on the biotech industry, after tidying up some of these loose ends. That's what we decided at the steering committee.
I don't even see why there's a concern about this.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
I hope we don't get back into previous comments, but I think Alex and Mr. Lemieux had a good point. I mean, I have no problem if one party wants to bring a representative from an organization, but I think there's nothing wrong if the president of the Federation of Agriculture for New Brunswick is one of the witnesses and can give an overall picture of what's happening in their area.
I don't think it necessarily has to be a farmer. It should be a farmer, but it could be a farmer who represents a group. I think we should leave it to the parties to figure out. We want an overall sense. It's not that there's anything wrong with having a hog producer, but maybe we should approve somebody who knows a bit about how the programs are working in their area.
We'll leave it to the different parties to come up with somebody. But I think we'd have a very good discussion if we had representatives of the farming community who see the overall good and bad of what's happening out there.
I have a speakers' list, and Mr. Easter and Mr. Lemieux are on next.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I disagree with the comments from Mr. Storseth. This is not a partisan smear. It's trying to deal with the issues that farmers on the ground face out there. If that means it challenges the government and what they're doing or not doing, then so be it.
I think this committee has a responsibility to farmers in this country, rather than making excuses for the government. There are several issues. I'd love to deal with biotech, but biotech is not going to do anything, as I mentioned earlier this morning, for the 30 people who are now going through farm debt review in my particular province. It's not going to do anything for some of the ones who can't cashflow their operations because of the announcement by the minister on emergency advance programs. We need to find a solution so that we can keep those producers farming.
There are three or four emergency issues.
One, I have quotes here from Linda Oliver from Saskatchewan, who's involved in that whole area from the Quill Lakes over to the Interlake of Manitoba. Those producers don't see a future right now. AgriStability, she says right here, did not work for cow-calf producers and they don't have a cushion to work with. They need something else. AgriRecovery is not working for them.
In the Interlake area a producer called me the other day, and I was out there on Thanksgiving weekend. Finally it was two weeks of dry weather. They certainly weren't going to get their crops off, but they could get some hay off. Now they find out, because they're three months' late getting their hay off, that their cattle are getting diarrhea and are getting sick. It's a serious problem. They don't have the money to buy hay, to bring it in, and it is going to have to be addressed on an emergency basis.
I think we have a responsibility as a committee to deal with those kinds of problems, rather than jollying off to talk about something like biotech. I'd love to do that, but there are too many other important things.
The other point I want to make is about a serious issue that I think we need to address--and the steering committee did suggest it--and that's to talk about the CFIA and the bad audit they got, by their own internal auditor, which is clearly saying that imported product, other than seafood and beef and hogs and eggs, is not up to the safety standards of Canadian domestic product. It also puts Canadian producers at a disadvantage, because imported product doesn't have to meet the same production standards or quality standards that ours does.
I think those are important issues to people on the ground, and that's why I agree with this agenda.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
That tidies up the comments on our report. I guess everybody understands it.
Can I have a motion?
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
A show of hands from whoever is in favour of the report as written by the clerk.
(Motion agreed to)
Thanks, folks, for pulling that through.
Mr. Atamanenko.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
This is still not quite clear. So it's one witness per party?
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
That's the understanding, and we hope to have a person who can tell us the good and the bad and what's happening out there a bit and who has an understanding of the programs.
There are two meetings we need witnesses for. That's one. The other one is the emergency relief program that we're also going to need witnesses for.
So now we are going to move on to motions. Does everybody have copies?
I have never chaired with motions before. There is a set order that we have to go through, Clerk, isn't there?
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
How many motions do we have? Do you want to give us a little overview of what we're dealing with here?
The Clerk
My understanding, when this time was set aside, was basically to allow members to propose any motions for which we've already received notice. There are quite a few outstanding, some from as long ago as March. So it's basically to help the committee do a little bit of housekeeping. If anybody wanted to bring anything forward, they could. There's no set procedure necessarily to follow, in the sense that whoever would like to speak just asks for the right to speak and they can propose their motion and go from there.
The Clerk
That's right. Someone would move a motion, there would be debate on it, and then a vote on it.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Chair, what I was going to say was that I think the normal practice of the committee is that we start with the older motions first, so that we don't get into a—
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
—and then we can jump ahead to another motion, if the committee tends to agree.
The second point I'd like to bring up, though, is the number of motions. This is one of the things that might have frustrated Mr. Atamanenko, that this committee deals with a lot of motions. I find we work very well together as a committee when we're working on a study. When motions come forward, they tend to be fairly confrontational and they take a long time to get through, and they tend to obstruct the work of the committee in some sense. I think Mr. Atamanenko suffered from that. He ran out of time in having his bill studied by committee, because there were all of these opposition motions before the committee.
And the motions are not necessarily useful, Chair. For example, we just set the schedule. We just had a good discussion on the schedule and voted on it. The schedule is intact, and yet a lot of these motions now talk about changing the schedule—
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
—saying that we should study this, study that, and launch something on this. That's what I mean. The motions are typically not productive in this sense. We just voted for a schedule and yet these motions are going to deal with what the committee should be studying, and we're going to spend a long time discussing them. We're losing time; we're wasting energy.
Liberal
The Vice-Chair Liberal Mark Eyking
That's a very good point, Mr. Lemieux. Maybe as we go through these, because some of these might have been moved last spring—
Conservative