Evidence of meeting #15 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 farm.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I think that's great, because there's a lot of money tied up in this.
Chair, Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia
Yes, it's our biggest hurdle. Even with the Organic Farming Institute, one of the courses I want to do is on farm business. We've dealt with Community Futures to get funding, and they say there are tons of business courses out there. Yes, but this is farm business. This is different. We're really struggling to get funding for a business course. They say every small little college and everyone else has a business course, but it's not specialized for farming.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Right. Let me go over to David.
From your perspective, you come from a--
November 29th, 2011 / 5:10 p.m.
Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
I come from a business school. I view farming as a business, and I viewed farming as a business when I was farming.
Conservative
Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
Actually, at Ivey we do. We run a grower university for Syngenta. They bring in some of their farmers. They stay with us and learn about financial management, planning, and things like that. We have also just developed a strategic agriculture leaders program, which is to teach leadership to farm leaders. The George Morris Centre has some private ones.
Business planning has been supported pretty well under Growing Forward. I think that program is really worth continuing.
So that's the education side. On the advice side, organizations like the Canadian Association of Farm Advisors are really good sources for good people who understand the industry and can help with that.
Do I think both advice and education need to be supported going forward? Yes, absolutely. I mean, our stuff at Ivey is privately funded, but—
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
When you're talking about education, are you talking about courses or programs? Do you have to sign up for a one-year program, or do you offer distinct courses on the subject matter?
Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
We do distinct executive development courses of one week each. You come, you live with us, and—
Conservative
Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, As an Individual
Yes. At the University of Guelph you can also do an online MBA in agribusiness. There are those kinds of things, as well. Both of those are important to the future.
A lot of the farmers I see think of their business as a business. They really do.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you.
As chair, I'm going to take the prerogative to ask a couple of follow-up questions.
Mr. Paszkowski, I appreciate and understand your frustration with the cross-provincial border thing. I wish you good luck in your fight with that. It's something that should have been ended a long time ago in a lot of provinces.
I was originally a farmer in my other life, and that would always frustrate me. We were sitting beside Quebec, which supports its agriculture much more than the Province of Ontario did. I give Quebec credit for that, but there were some other transborder issues that were unfair to Ontario. The sooner all of those are gone, the better. I wish you good luck there.
To the Klippensteins, congratulations on getting your farmers award. I think that's very prestigious. I've had a couple in my own riding who have won the Ontario version of that. It's very commendable, so congratulations on that.
I have a couple points. My wife does most of the shopping in our family, but being in Ottawa, I do a little bit. When I go into a grocery store, whether it's my wife or me, if it doesn't say “organic”, we presume it isn't.
Is that a fair assumption?
Chair, Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia
If it doesn't say organic?
Chair, Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia
—assume it's not. Yes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
That's what we do. I came from the side of agriculture that isn't organic—unless you want to call our garden organic. We didn't spray it, and the only reason I didn't put fertilizer on it was that I had lots of cow manure and I was probably too cheap to put it on there. I put it on my fields instead. So in a roundabout way, I guess we did a little bit of organic.
My whole point is that when it comes to labelling, the bulk of our food still comes from the GMO side. As Mr. Sparling said, the science shows there's nothing out there to show it's unsafe. The bottom line is that we can put in restrictions and regulations all we want as government—which we keep getting told to do less of—or we can leave it as it is.
If I'm somebody who's bent on buying organic, which I think is a great food source and a great niche market. If it's not labelled organic, I can assume it's probably GMO. My point is that the choice is already there for the educated consumer. I just want to put that out there.
You probably have to agree with me that if it's not organic, I would assume it's GMO. Would that be a correct assumption?
Chair, Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia
That would be incorrect. We deal with thousands of consumers every week who don't necessarily think it's GMO if it's not organic.
Chair, Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia
Meaning that they might use pesticides or fungicides or herbicides, but not necessarily GMO.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Okay, that's a good point—but at the same time, it's not organic, or natural, or whatever term you want to use. That was the point.
Chair, Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia
Yes. But you're an educated consumer.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
I'll end it at that. I'll take a lot of kidding over that.
Anyway, I would like to thank all of you for coming here today, and—
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
We lose time at the end of these meetings, because we don't allow each other to finish at 5:30. These people have come a long way at the taxpayers' expense. Rather than just adjourning, I don't know why you don't allow one more round, or whatever, for a few more questions. I think there's value in that.
I have a question, and—