Agriculture Committee on March 24th, 2011

[Richard White]

No comment. That's a wheat issue.

[Richard Phillips]

The other legislation that is before the House is Bill C-27, to clean up the voters list and to remove banks and financial institutions and other people who just have an interest but don't actually farm. Whether it's a minimum amount of tonnage, we'd be interested in finding some way to ensure that actual farmers are making decisions when actual farmers vote and then people live with the results. So we'd be interested in seeing something along those lines also go forward.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Sure. Again, it's one more case of the opposition, of course, trying to block progress on things that will help farmers, and particularly our western wheat and barley. It's really unfortunate we have those guys doing that, but we'll move forward as strong as we can to try to make the changes, so you can have the opportunity to have the freedoms you want to have and deserve to have.

Can you elaborate a little further on it, Mr. Vandervalk? How would it look different for wheat and barley producers in western Canada if they did have that choice and that freedom to market their own wheat and barley?

[Stephen Vandervalk]

I can only compare it to how we grow canola and specialty crops. We would be able to forward contract; that would be one of the big ones. We'd be able to know our risks a lot better that way, because we'd have a kind of final price and a delivery window.

The biggest thing right now, and this has to do with the rail lines a bit, is that I have neighbours who have not shipped a single bushel of wheat, not a single bushel. I'm dead serious. And this is the end of March.

I guess the trouble we have is that we have too many players in the game. That's part of it. They blame each other, so no one takes blame. The Wheat Board blames the rail.... Now, there are three players. You have the creditor-exporters, such as the elevators. They'll blame the Wheat Board or blame the railroads, and the Wheat Board will blame the elevator or the railroads.

It's very difficult dealing with some of the Wheat Board reps, in that they're a little out of touch, inasmuch as you make a deal with a certain elevator—because you have different grades—and say you're going to haul everything there, and they will give you a certain grade. So you phone there and say “We haven't delivered anything”. So they say to phone around; you can deliver to all these different elevators.

It doesn't work that way. You can't just deliver to anywhere you want. You make deals, and that's the way it works.

So there's a lot of the blame game, and we need to eliminate some of the players. That's part of it. It's just the fact of.... It's nothing to do with the Wheat Board—that's good; that's trade. It's the monopoly, plain and simple.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Absolutely, and that's exactly what it is. Farmers want to have the choice. If you want to market through the Wheat Board, you should have that opportunity, and if you want to market outside, then you should have that opportunity. All people are asking is to have that marketing freedom.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Do you have a point of order, Mr. Eyking?

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I thought we were doing a study on biotech, not a marketing study. I would just hope that the honourable member—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

It's my time, Mark, thank you. It's my time; I'll use it as I wish. Thank you very much.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

—would keep to the study.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

It is really unfortunate, though, because—

[An hon. member]

Wait a second.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I would ask you to keep to the topic, Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I appreciate that. I did actually want to move to that exactly.

We've heard a lot today from you about the success story that there has been in GM canola. Obviously that's one aspect of biotechnology, and it certainly has been a success story, there's no question about it; I think there's no disputing that.

What I would be interested in hearing a little further about, from anyone who would like to answer the question, is.... Tell me about something that you see is on its way, in terms of biotechnology, that will make improvements for...something that's promising, that we can expect to see in the near future. Does anything come to mind for any of you, particularly something very promising in terms of biotechnology that we could look forward to in the near future? And what positive effects will it have on the industry?

[Richard Phillips]

I can give you one cereal grain example that is actually happening in Australia. It's an example in which they have drought-tolerant wheat coming. It's using biotechnology—not necessarily GM, but it's biotech wheat. They're looking at 20% yield increases in the dry years using the drought-tolerant wheat. So there's one example.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Is there anyone else who has an example?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. White, I believe, has one.

[Richard White]

One example coming down the technology pipeline quickly would be nitrogen-use efficiency. Canola, as you know, uses a lot of nitrogen, and genetic change to make more efficient use of that nitrogen will help cut the nitrogen bill for farmers. That one should be coming close.

Longer-term than that, we are hearing estimates that not only corn and soybean yields will double by 2013, but there's a commitment in the industry to double canola yields by the year 2013, and we're not going to do that without biotechnology.

Did I say 2013? I meant 2030.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Your time has expired, Mr. Richards.

We'll now move to Mr. Hoback.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Before I get into my questions, I want to generally take this opportunity, in spite of the possibility of an election showing up, to wish all my colleagues the best in their personal lives—“electoral lives” is a little different case, but their personal lives. You've become friends around this table. You've handled yourselves relatively well with the proceedings of this session, especially this last study.

I just want to wish you all very well. It's always an honour to serve as a member of Parliament in this great country called Canada. I think everybody around this table can take pride in knowing that they've done what they thought was best for farmers. Again, personal success; electoral success, we'll leave to the voters.

I'll get into my questions. I'm going to go a little bit into history here. If we look at 2005—and Stephen, you could probably talk about 2005—you know the situation on the prairies: we were losing farmers; the beef sector was going down. Canola might have been the only bright light, and even that was sitting at six or seven dollars a bushel at that time.

How does that situation compare with today's?

[Stephen Vandervalk]

Prices have come up a long way; that's been a huge difference.

Speaking specifically to canola, there's absolutely no doubt—you can talk to every farmer in western Canada—that canola pays the bills. As I mentioned, we can't ship a lot of our other stuff. It's because of the value added on the prairies—you have seen crushing plants going up for canola, and we're using a lot more canola here—that we're able to deliver: we're not shipping it to the coast. That's huge.

Keeping as much grain as we can on the prairies--that's something ongoing that we need to be focused on, so that we aren't having all these railway delays and being basically—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I'm sure that you'd agree with me, though, that if the minister did not have the ability to open up markets and if we didn't have these markets open, we would not see the premiums we're seeing in the canola and beef sectors. I think you'd all agree with me that it's a fair statement.

[Stephen Vandervalk]

Yes. That's a fair statement, for sure.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Then as we look at the biotech study and at regulations around biotech, I guess that just reiterates the macro effects that can happen when you bring forward a bad motion or bad policies. Is that correct?

Mr. Everson or Mr. White, if we were to see something that all of a sudden would restrict access based on something other than science, what would that do to our industry?

[Richard White]

Well, it depends, Mr. Hoback. I guess if you look at the example of China, they were in for three to four million tonnes one year, and all of a sudden, they closed up their border due to a blackleg issue, which in our view was a non-tariff trade barrier. Again, that was not based on science. We had all the science behind us to say that the varieties here in Canada were of no threat to their rapeseed-producing areas in China. All of a sudden, the market dissipated overnight for a period of time. It's starting to come back now.

If it's a two to three million tonne per year market, they can shut the door pretty quickly. That has severe consequences here in Canada, and the price will plummet.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Again, their ability to argue science in China, for example, was the fact that we used science ourselves. So if we changed it to something other than science, as Mr. Atamanenko's bill proposed, how would we have credibility in opening those markets?