Evidence of meeting #11 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
First, on the hog industry loan-loss program, is there any way the department tracks the progress of that program? The federal government is in for half, right? They've backed half the loans provided in that loan program?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
On the specifics, I'll have to get back to you. The general structure of that program, as I recall, was that we guaranteed up to 90%. It might have a bit of a sliding scale over time. I think there is a reporting mechanism that the FIs have agreed to on the performance of those loans. We've provisioned a significant amount of money that we provide the FIs on the basis of the loan portfolio they have. They tell us when a default has been triggered.
Are you asking what is the state, and how the defaults are going, or...?
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
It's basically just what the exposure is on our side in terms of risk. It looks like it's not at your fingertips, so I'll move on to another question.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I'd be happy to provide to the committee the specifics, whatever we can provide.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Okay. That would be appreciated.
In the committee meetings we've had so far studying Growing Forward 2 on innovation, there have been comments, almost to a witness, about the paperwork requirements for a lot of the Agri-Innovation programs, and almost.... I'm not specifically pointing it out, but there's almost a need to hire somebody just to manage the paperwork. Obviously this would be an opportunity for improvement.
What can you tell us, at this point, the department's looking to streamline on the paperwork on this?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
As I mentioned earlier on the efficiency questions, we've heard that too, and we've certainly seen it in the testimony that people bring to the committee.
I think in general what I've taken away from the discussion is that the programs have been relatively well received, and perceived to be fairly effective, but there are some issues of transparency and making sure that people get answers quickly so that they can make decisions to do other things. There's certainly an issue of complexity.
Governments, especially in complex areas, do a lot of due diligence on innovation programming. I can give you the example of simply purchasing a new piece of capital equipment; it's a pretty straightforward program. If you have a contribution for that, if it looks like a biodiesel-producing operation, you can fund it. In areas where there's high risk, you have to look at the entire company fairly comprehensively, or the entire capacity of the science performer. Do they have the management capacity to carry this off? Do they have the technical capacity? Is the technology feasible? Is there a market opportunity? These things take time.
What we've done is that we had two very successful programs--clusters and DIAP, if I can put those together--and then another program called Agri-Opportunities, and we had--
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Oh, sorry.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
--but you kind of got two in there.
If it's a direct follow-up to it, I'll allow it.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Well, I was going to say that I'll assume that the department's looking to improve the paperwork component to the program.
That's what I'll assume the department's going to do?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
That was a bureaucratic “yes”.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Actually, Mr. Chair, I just want to comment on the relevance of Mr. Lobb's questions today. They were bang-on, frankly, and I want to....
Sorry?
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
He's from Ontario, by the way.
I just wanted to pursue a bit the question about business risk management.
You're quite right, the Minister of Agriculture for Ontario was quite vocal in her opposition to the Saint Andrews statement, and it was about business risk management. I'm gathering from your answer, and you correct me if I'm wrong, that the federal Minister of Agriculture was prepared to make changes to the model--call it what you want, viability test or Olympic averaging--but some unnamed provincial ministers weren't prepared to make changes, just to be clear.
Am I understanding you correctly?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
I think you've got two things going there. One would be the discussions that FPT ministers have had with respect to these parameter changes, which have resulted in no consensus to move forward--in other words, no, we're not going to do these.
In the RMP case, I think it was less the content of Saint Andrews.... Again, I really don't mean to put myself into her mind, but from my perspective, it looked like less the content of Saint Andrews and more that it didn't move in the direction of allowing funding for the RMP, which had been an issue between the governments leading up to Saint Andrews.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
But I understood it was specifically business risk that she was concerned about.
Be that as it may, in your answer previously to Mr. Lobb's question, I understood you to say that there was no consensus, but that the federal minister was prepared to move on the issue of the model--Olympic averaging, viability test, however you want to look at it.
I'm just trying to determine that the minister was prepared to make changes but there were provincial ministers who weren't prepared, and that's why consensus couldn't be reached. Is that a fair assessment?
November 15th, 2011 / 4:55 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
No; I would say no. In the cases of the parameter changes, I wouldn't say it was our minister versus provinces. I wouldn't characterize the discussion that way.
