Agriculture Committee on Dec. 8th, 2011

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Malcolm Allen]

Thank you, Mr. Lemieux.

Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair. I'm going to be sharing my time with Mr. Lobb.

I made some notes in terms of the chicken farmers, and you were talking about research, that basically you're doing all of the research. I know we have some clusters out there, and I believe you folks had some research dollars from the government. I'm wondering how you see the best way to have those research dollars benefit your industry—universities, your own research?

[Mike Dungate]

We actually got together as a value chain in all of poultry, so eggs, turkeys, hatching eggs, chickens, plus the processors, and we created the Canadian Poultry Research Council. We did that because we were seeing overlap in what we were doing.

Frankly, in universities there also weren't enough poultry researchers, so we created some programs ourselves that were to fund graduate students in that area. We built it up, and a number of us contributed some capital funding to universities. We don't really want to do that, but we did, and I think we've got a good network now across universities and so on in Canada to do poultry research.

The focus of CPRC, and what we like about the cluster program, is that we focus the research dollars. So in January or February we'll bring university researchers in and talk about the priorities of the industry, so they will apply through us. We like the concept where the government works with us on the dollars, so that it's industry-focused research and not pet projects at universities.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

That's a great answer.

Mr. Lobb.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Chorney, to Mr. Lemieux's point about price insurance, maybe you could tell the committee if we already have a market.... We have markets in Chicago or wherever, where we can trade options and forward contracts and everything. That tool is available.

I understand the issue with maybe not having the funds to fuel the accounts to cover the margins. If that's there, does government need to create another set of price insurance programs, and if we do, can you tell us why?

[Doug Chorney]

The key thing—and Humphrey Banack, Wild Rose Agricultural Producers' president from Alberta has explained it to me—is that the accessibility and usability of the programming is different in Alberta. Certainly, if you have a commodity broker and you have an investment counsellor, you can do all these sophisticated things of hedging off Chicago futures on your own, but does the average farmer in a small, busy family farm really have the time to do that? Having a product that's administered provincially by your crop insurance agency or whoever is providing your ag services in the province with federal support.... I think in Alberta they actually don't have any government money involved in the price insurance program; it's strictly actuarially self-supporting. I think the administration is helped by the Alberta government only, so it's not costing government money.

When we talk about the advance payments program and using cash advances, this is another example of a tool that allows farmers to take the profitability from the marketplace and not from government programming. Anything we can do to make it more efficient for farmers to access marketplace revenue is going to give pressure relief to government spending on government programs.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

To summarize, you'd say yes.

[Doug Chorney]

Yes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay.

One last question to Ms. Holowath. You were talking about caps on AgriInvest, and the taxpayer has to also believe this is reasonable. So if you're going to raise the caps, are you talking about raising the caps to, say, 1.5% to 2.5%, or are you talking about taking the cap from, say, $22,000 to $222,000? What number do you feel is a reasonable cap that protects the average Canadian farmer?

[Terri Holowath]

I'm saying get rid of AgriInvest and redirect those funds toward other programs within agriculture, whether it be market access, innovation, or research. Right now it's like peanut butter spread really thin. You're trying to get the largest number of producers as opposed to the largest number of production. Redirect the funds, is what I'm suggesting.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Malcolm Allen]

Thank you very much, folks.

We do have some committee business to do, so let me just take the opportunity to thank the witnesses for being here today and for your input. It was greatly appreciated by the committee. You're free to go, obviously—and we are not. Have a great weekend.

Okay, folks, we can get started on committee business. We don't have an unlimited amount of time, unless of course you want to stay longer. I'm in your hands. If you want to stay for a while, it's okay.

We're going to go into committee business, and my sense of this is that we're still with the motion we were discussing at the last meeting. I'm assuming that's where we want to head, to go back to that discussion.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Malcolm Allen]

Then I open the floor to that discussion.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Oh, we should be going into.... Do we need to pass a motion?

Okay. I'll move a motion that we go in camera, Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Malcolm Allen]

A motion to go in camera is non-debatable. All those in favour? Opposed?

It's four and four, folks. Where's Bob?

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Chair, can I speak on the motion, please?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Malcolm Allen]

First, Mr. Valeriote, it is a four-four decision, so it is my decision whether to go in camera or not.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Oh. I thought it automatically failed if was tied.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Malcolm Allen]

No, it doesn't fail. It gets me to break it.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Here's our member, sir.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Malcolm Allen]

But we've already called the vote.

Let me just say this to the government side. Am I going to help you here? I hope you're hearing the help. I'm going to move that we go in camera, but I hope you understand what I've done for you when we have the discussion.

[Proceedings continue in camera]