Evidence of meeting #6 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.
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
I would just add that for our industry one of the most important things in climate change is making sure that the forage and the grass technology and research continues to allow us to adapt to these changes.
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
Thank you.
I have a question for Mr. Boon.
After attending meetings of the North and South Peace cattle feeders meetings in Dawson Creek and Montney, I'm beginning to get extremely close to the industry and understand some of its concerns and also its benefits to our province, specifically B.C.
It's not very well known that Alberta doesn't sell the only beef in Canada. In B.C. we have a large amount of that to sell.
I want to ask you what our government has done, specifically with regard to B.C., in your mind—and as part of our Growing Forward program prior—to specifically benefit B.C. cattle producers.
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
We do have a challenge with the British Columbia government. One of our biggest problems and handicaps is the fact that it does not have a huge agriculture budget and does not seem to have it as a huge priority there.
Having said that, where its help has benefited us, and it was actually announced in 2010, but we got access to the funds in 2011, was a joint federal-provincial AgriFlex initiative on research and marketing of $5 million--$2 million provincial and $3 million federal. That was brought forward as an incentive by the British Columbia government and as part of our ranching task force that we put together in 2009.
One of the issues we have had, and it's more to do with the business risk management end, is that the B.C. government hasn't participated in the past. It is one of the reasons why, when we come forward on a federal basis, we think there has to be some improvement made in assessments, in how we go out, and in how it's implemented, so we can have a more fair system across the entire country. That's because when a neighbouring province gets assistance or a program, it will create competitive disparities, but it will also create market fluctuations that can be very detrimental within the province. That had been one of our issues within British Columbia, just having it step up to the plate.
Conservative
Bob Zimmer Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
Sure. To be more specific, I meant to ask about our federal role in B.C. cattle production. How did our federal program benefit B.C. cattle producers?
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
In the one program we have put forward now in AgriFlex, you mean?
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
Right now it is very beneficial. We are just getting the program under way. There are several research program projects that are being put forward. But on the marketing end of things—and we're working very closely with the British Columbia government on this, on trade with the Asian market, for example—we're seeing that B.C. is a gateway to Canada.
With the way cattle production is in B.C., I think we are very much seed stock growers. We haven't got the ability to produce enough grain in the right areas to feed our cattle to finish so they end up in Alberta or into the United States. We're looking at more innovative ways of keeping that at home. And by at home, I mean within Canada. We don't like to see the cattle being fed in the U.S. because one of the biggest things we can do for our industry and for our economy is add value. When we start shipping off raw product, no matter where it is sent—to the U.S., overseas, to Asia—we lose opportunity within our own country and our own provinces to keep people employed and to keep our economy strong.
I think these innovations like the research and marketing flexibility fund are giving us a lot of opportunity there, and we welcome it.
A couple of other places the federal government has been really helpful is in.... We've had a couple of disease outbreaks in the last couple of years that have turned out to be not disease outbreaks. We've had anaplasmosis and we've had brucellosis. In the first one we had some issues around the investigation with CFIA. Through communicating, through help from our local MP, Cathy McLeod, we had some very positive results come out of that.
As a result, when brucellosis was discovered and then it turned out not to be brucellosis, we had a little change in attitude and we worked a better relationship with CFIA.
Now we have tuberculosis in British Columbia, and this time it's for real. But that communication and that ability to work together with CFIA on the ground was cemented through the other two and we've been able to do very well, and it's some of those programs that are really helping us out now.
NDP
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start with Mary.
Mary, thank you. It's good to see you again. And thank you for your candour on your reference to the moral imperative to deal with food security and the environment. We're ignoring it. We have 10% of our population who are food insecure in Canada, living in poverty, and we just don't seem to be willing to do anything about it.
You also heard me reference earlier the government's own expert panel on federal support to research and development, which noted that we've consistently dropped our expenditure on research and development each year since 2006, to the point where we spend only 1% of our GDP on business expenditure on R and D, as opposed to the 1.6% that's spent on average by 34 other OECD countries.
And it gets worse. NSERC has dropped quality and novel by-products from its list of target areas for strategic grants, and the Network of Centres of Excellence, as you know, didn't renew its funding for the Advanced Food and Materials Network, otherwise known as AFMNet. I'm sure you know Rickey Yada, in Guelph.
It's disconcerting to me that this trend exists when we have to increase our food production by 70% over the next 40 years if we're going to feed the world.
So can you tell us, are we heading in the wrong direction? Should we be reversing our course? What do you think should be done to restore agriculture and agrifood as a priority for granting agencies?
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan
Asking a researcher and a dean if there's enough money in the system is always.... I mean, there isn't. There never is. We always have to—
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan
I understand. And the trend, particularly in the NSERC system of science and technology, has been going down. The changes in the NSERC system have been an issue for us for sure.
Within the science and technology of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, it's been increasingly focused. That focus has been a choice of AAFC, and we're not really unhappy with that. The problems we have in working with AAFC are exactly what have been referred to by a number of other people: the large increase in the level of bureaucracy, the difficulties in making programs work, and in the rapid-fire changes or the lack of forethought.
With that, as a direct answer to your question, what I would like to encourage, particularly within Growing Forward 2, is that AAFC continue to increase its researcher base, which they started in Growing Forward 1. Also, don't throw out the cluster program. We've had a lot of problems with it, yes, but those were the implementation problems; those are not the problems of the actual program itself. In the first two years, if you mentioned the cluster program, people would spit at you, but now, as we've gotten through the problems and we're actually seeing how those collaborations are really working well, people don't want them to end. That's why losing AFMNet was such a problem, because this was working.
Let's fix the problems, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Let's just sort out the issues, learn from the mistakes we've made, build on the good portions of it, and keep it going. We really like having AAFC as collaborators, with its political connections, with its interest in application, and with the power it has in the research stations across the country. We like having them to work with; we find them to be really good partners.
The other thing we'd like AAFC to be able to do is to be more openly involved in the training of people, in the training of graduate students and technicians, and reduce some of the barriers, such as the high-level security just to get in and out of an Ag Canada building, even if you're collaborating with them. Those pieces would really be helpful to us in order to enhance our ability to collaborate.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
You have time for a statement only; you've got less than 10 seconds.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Can you tell me about the competitive disadvantage associated with your need to deal with carbon emissions? And do you think it should be a national program to level the playing field across Canada on--
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Maybe in answering you can respond to that one.
I'll move to Mr. Hoback for five minutes.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming out this afternoon. It's always great to see you here and to talk to witnesses who have some credibility. I think that's great.
I'm going to start with Ms. Buhr. The last time we met it was actually a great day in Saskatoon. It was the opening of the VIDO-InterVac laboratory, and we had a special guest there.
When we look at the funding of that operation and the process you went through to get that, from basically a theory to actual cement and mortar...have you any advice? Would you say that is a process we should look at for other projects in the cluster? Or is there something we could be doing better? Have you any opinion on that?
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan
The VIDO-InterVac Centre was jointly funded with large input from the federal and provincial...and the university as well. It's level three research that can actually do disease research on large animals. So we can take in cows and do level three disease research. It's really useful and important.
Again, with the issues that went into it, from start to finish it took about 10 years, but that huge collaboration on what was recognized as a national need is absolutely a model that we would certainly promote. It is also the kind of thing where you can say, “We need one or more of these in the country, and who can best do it? Let's focus it there and make sure everybody has access to it.” And that collaborative spirit of building plus the joint access subsequent to that is a very important model.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Actually, you went right where I was going to go next, and that's the collaborative aspect. If you were to look today at the collaboration among universities and the work among researchers from campus to campus—and it would have been nice to have the University of Winnipeg online here at the same time because I'd like to ask them the same question—are there things we could do better? Is it important? Or how important is that collaboration?
As that moves forward, as I said, are there things we could be doing better?
Dean and Professor, College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan
We are working better together as agricultural universities across the country than we ever have been in the past, and that is just growing. So that is very useful, we think.
Again, the kinds of programs that you put out there to entice us to work together are the ones that are very useful. In the agricultural community we appreciate the programs that work with Agriculture Canada, the universities, and industry, because that grounds us in a great reality and helps the kind of dialogue we need.
It might be very useful if the same sort of approach were used in a public dialogue. One of the reasons we don't get enough students coming into the universities to service the industry and everybody else is that agriculture is not thought of as a highly technical and very exciting kind of career for the future. We don't have an image problem; we have a problem with the public trusting us. They trust farmers, but they don't trust agriculture, and they don't understand agriculture to be the breadth that we understand it to be. So if you can partner with industry, universities, and government--provincial and federal--to undertake that kind of a public dialogue that would actually get the truth out and find out what people need to know in order for them to trust us, it would be very helpful, I would think.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
On the aspect of trust, that's a good point you make. What's undermining a lot of the research and the work we're doing in moving forward is the fact that we have people who have ulterior motives to undermine that trust and who have economic reasons to undermine that trust. I always come back to the role of this committee, or the role of government. It's always to ensure that we have safe, affordable food. And I always get a little concerned when people say that government isn't doing its job or that farmers aren't growing safe, affordable food when I know differently. Is there anything we can do or any strategies we should look at for overcoming this mistrust?
General Manager, British Columbia Cattlemen's Association
That's one of those age-old questions. Is it mistrust that we need to overcome, or is it education that we need to put out there?
I think what has happened is that our consumers and society have reached a point at which we have created such a safe product that they are unwilling to accept any risk. If we look back through history, there has always been a risk associated with it. Now it seems that there is no risk that is acceptable in the public's eye.
We by no means condone any chance of a sickness or an illness, and we want to keep it as safe as possible, but there has to be an understanding that there is always an element of risk; that is one thing that comes with life.
Sometimes we work so hard to make it riskless that we have to step back and understand a little that we just can't do it.
Conservative
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both witnesses.
Dr. Buhr, you talked earlier about what I will call an input, when you talked about seeing this challenge in front of us concerning 2050. One of the inputs you talked about is the scarcity of water. Could you speak not to the scarcity per se, but to what sort of research we need to do if we indeed have a scarcity of water? Plant life doesn't grow well without at least some. The odd cactus does not do badly, but I don't know that they're very edible. Some are, I suppose, but the spiny ones don't seem appetizing.
At the same time, rather than coming back to ask another question, let me ask this. You talked about the waste stream, and I am quite interested in it. It is a less glamorous aspect, perhaps, of areas in which innovation and research are needed, but one which seems to be—no pun intended—the low-hanging fruit for science and innovation to capture.
What do you see as specific things that we should be looking at in those two specific areas around research and development?