Evidence of meeting #27 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 need.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Food Processors Association
It would be progress. There have been some negotiations among the provinces on federally inspected meat. It may not ever come to pass in my lifetime, but there is work being done.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
You talked about Loblaws standards and Walmart standards and all the different standards. Is it really the government's problem that Walmart or Loblaws have certain standards, or is that the industry's issue?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Food Processors Association
The government's problem is a result of that. The result is that people are closing their doors.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Maybe we could relate this to the auto industry, an industry I was in before I came here. About 10 years ago, they had TS 16949, which were world standards put together by the industry. If you wanted to be a tier-one supplier to the Big Three, you had to be TS 16949. It had nothing to do with the government. It was all with industry, and everybody was at one standard.
Instead of having the government involved, doesn't that make sense, or should this industry be treated differently?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Food Processors Association
How many automobile manufacturing companies are there in the world? Can I count them all on two hands? We've got 4,600 small and medium-sized guys. We've got 6,700 different companies in Canada—
President and Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Food Processors Association
Multiply that around the world, and good luck.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
I'll ask you a question: how many automotive parts suppliers are there around the world? I'll tell you, it's probably the same number. That's my point.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Food Processors Association
I don't think it's anywhere near that kind of number. It's not a homogeneous industry, unfortunately, and that's the difficulty.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
No, but I'm just saying shouldn't the same...? Well, okay. We've got five minutes. Whatever.
Ms. Paskal, in your paper you talk about prohibitions on corporate farms. Are you saying a small family farm that's incorporated should be prohibited?
Senior Policy Advisor, Food Secure Canada
No. I'd have to find the exact page, but certainly not. The idea here is around keeping farms in the hands of farmers, so there'd be no absentee ownership or corporate ownership by people who have nothing to do with farming, as in foreign ownership, investor ownership. The idea there is that the people on Canadian farms should be farmers farming. That's the essence of that point.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Also in your presentation you talked about young farmers and that we need to get more. I still think I'm pretty young, but not too far down the road from where I live a 150-acre farm was sold the other day for $2.2 million. It had no buildings, no home, not even a driveway. How's a poor guy like me going to buy that farm in 2012?
Senior Policy Advisor, Food Secure Canada
You hit the nail on the head. What's interesting is the link between the two questions you had, because foreign ownership, absentee ownership, all of that—
Conservative
Senior Policy Advisor, Food Secure Canada
It drives up the prices of all the farms, right, so it makes it possible to ask for $2.2 million for a farm. These things are important. Globally there's a land grab on farmland because it can be used for all kinds of things now, and it's pricing out food and food production. In Canada we need to keep an eye on that, because we could lose our farming base, and our farming base is what's going to enable us not only to build our economy, support our health system, and support our environment, but also to maintain our food security into the future. These are serious security issues at the same time.
There's a real link between the way we handle our landholdings and the case of the $2.2 million farm, which means we then can't have farmers on the land.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
Did you say the government should legislate grocery stores to carry certain goods?
Senior Policy Advisor, Food Secure Canada
It's a possibility. When we look at trying to build the demand side for local and sustainable food, assuming the benefits, we can look at that idea.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm short on time.
If you look at the case of Loblaws with their Ontario corn-fed beef program, isn't that the right way to go? The industry and the farm groups come together, there's demand from the consumer, and the retailer understands there's an opportunity here to have a good thing. Isn't that the way it should go, instead of government screwing things up and legislating that they do something?
Senior Policy Advisor, Food Secure Canada
They could go hand in hand. For instance, to go back to the bee example that your counterpart was giving, unless we make it easy for them to buy local and sustainable—
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
What I'm saying is it wasn't Jimmy the beef farmer who went to Loblaws and said he had a few loins here for them. They came together as a group on the Ontario corn-fed beef.
It's the same thing with Mr. Eyking. If Joe the beekeeper has a few pints of honey, Loblaws is too big to deal with, but if they came together as an industry or in a region, that's the way to go, instead of legislating it.
Senior Policy Advisor, Food Secure Canada
I think they're two sides of the same coin to reach the same ends.
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I didn't realize the government was all bad all the time, but in any case, maybe I'm happy I'm in the opposition and not feeling as if I'm all bad all the time in the government.
Mr. Culbert, I think you were saying earlier that you see E. coli as a public health issue. If I read you correctly, you're saying at three bucks a dose, it's about $50 million for the Canadian herd. That saves us about $221 million in health care costs, all dollars being approximate. Rather than your seeing it as a safety issue for the farm per se, it becomes a public health issue, so it's in the public purview in the sense that it should be in the form of legislation, etc.
If indeed there was a will to do this across the country as public policy, does the cost of three bucks a dose go down if we inoculate every animal in the country?
