Agriculture Committee on Feb. 5th, 2013

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Would you be able to offer me some opinion and knowledge that you may have in that area? I'm just wondering if you would know of any way that we would be able to take a look and quantify or qualify the kind of damage that those interprovincial trade barriers would do to the industry. Would there be any way we would be able to do that? Would you have any knowledge of that?

[Prof. Kenneth A. Rosaasen]

As economists, we do talk about gains from trade and how, if you can move products efficiently and do what you're best at, there are gains. We have a host of historical movements of products, including in supply managed products and other things. Sometimes there are bits of inhibitors. It can be regulatory and it can also be market power issues. It is good if we can trade between provinces. There are net gains to be made. Watch the specific products you are looking at.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Allen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all.

Perhaps I'll take a different tack than did my friend across the way, whose sense of democracy is that if folks don't agree, it's a bad thing. I guess it depends on who you agree with.

Rather than trying to pigeonhole folks into giving yes or no answers to “When was the last time you had breakfast, yes or no?”, Mr. Wells, why don't you articulate the context of your words, and I'll allow Mr. Robson to do the same thing. Since my colleague across the way was pretty adamant about “just give me a yes or no”...and to be honest, if this is a fact-finding piece, I don't think you find out too many facts when it becomes “yes or no”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Richards, on a point of order.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I find it troubling. Mr. Allen is well aware, as a member who's been here for some amount of time now, that as members we have the prerogative to do what we want with our time. I had a very limited amount of time. As you can see, I didn't have a chance to get to all the questions I had as it was.

I'm just wondering if you can rule on that, Mr. Chair. Is it not correct that we have the right as members to do as we want with our time? I think it's unfortunate that he would choose to comment on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

I won't rule on it as a point of order. I will just ask everyone to make their questions relevant. I know everybody has comments they'd like to include. Regrettably, you're limited to five minutes, so I would ask that you use your time well.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

As Mr. Richards has clearly pointed out, it's my time, and I get to choose to use it as I want, as he did. I guess if that's my choice, Mr. Richards has decided that his decision on how we use it should be his way rather than my choice. If it's an open choice, then it's up to me to decide how to use it, Chair, within the confines, of course, of the chair's discretion and direction.

Based on that, I would go back to Mr. Wells and ask him the same question again. But rather than repeating it and using up the time, I'll allow Mr. Wells to talk to us.

[Stewart Wells]

Thank you, Mr. Allen.

I share the disappointment that Mr. Richards has used important committee time, in my view, to try to smear witnesses. I have had in the intervening couple of minutes the opportunity to think about my outgoing speech at the NFU convention. In fact, that quote Mr. Richards was using comes from a book, a very well-written and important book, by a Canadian professor by the name of Chris Lind, who in the 1980s wrote a book called Something's Wrong Somewhere. I would invite anyone who's interested in value chains and Canadian family farmers to give that book a very close read.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Robson, I think you wanted to clarify the comments that were made about something you had said at some point in time.

[Ian Robson]

Thank you very much.

I consider Mr. Hoback and Mr. Richards and the rest of the committee around this table to be friends of mine and to be very interested in the topic at hand: the supply chain.

He talked about an article in which I was interviewed and the word “jackboot” was used. I'd recommend that the public read that article, because I think that article aptly describes what happened when this particular Canadian government jackboot killed the Canadian Wheat Board, which the majority of farmers defended and tried to support. But this government went behind closed committee doors, cut off committee time, and did exactly what Mr. Richards has just done—tried to waste valuable committee time. If he was honest in his questions to me, Mr. Richards would ask me what my community involvement is.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Let me go back to the value chain. My colleague talked earlier about rail. Can anybody talk to me about seeing any impacts on the short line? One of the things I heard when I was on the prairies last year was about the potential impact. Have we seen any impact yet on the short-line system and those who are actually running it?

I'll start with Kenneth and then move back to Stewart and Ian.

[Prof. Kenneth A. Rosaasen]

Short lines are being used. Some of the farmers have gotten together, and they are using their short line and they are using the Wheat Board and shipping grain out directly. I haven't followed each short line very closely. I know some of them are still being used.

I'll pass it over to Stewart to round it out.

[Stewart Wells]

Thanks.

The latest statistics that I have are from about a week ago. The use of producer cars is down by 20% to 25% so far. Whether it will continue to drop or whether it will pick up is hard to tell. I've also heard that, at least in some localities, the price of the farmers' grain loaded into these producer cars is actually less than what's being offered at the local elevators, which would mean that between the railways and the system and marketing in general, the value of producer cars may already be being extracted out of farmers' pockets and allocated somewhere else.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Ian.

[Ian Robson]

Thank you.

Quickly, I would say that in Manitoba there have been a couple of investigations by producer groups into buying short-line railways. CP had indicated that they were going to give up some rail lines. I know that one of the rail lines is in Mr. Tweeds' constituency.

I'll ask Mr. Tweed right now if he's aware of what the status of that farmer effort towards buying a CP rail is.

Mr. Tweed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Well, I thank you for the question, but today my role is not to answer questions, it's to direct them, so I'll go to Mr. Storseth.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I have a couple of quick questions.

Mr. Wells, you were elected as a director of the Canadian Wheat Board, as you stated earlier. I just had a quick question, because you talked somewhat about organic farming and the problems with that. When you were a Wheat Board director, how many farmers in your constituency were organic compared to non-organic?

[Stewart Wells]

The only number I would have at hand...and not all of these farmers were in my Wheat Board district, but in my particular chapter of my certifying agency, there were about 100 to 125. I don't know how many organic farmers there are in southern Alberta. A rough guess would be a couple of hundred.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

How does that compare to non-organic?

[Stewart Wells]

Non-organic would be several thousand.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Mr. Robson, I do want to congratulate you, if nothing else, for having elected a very competent member of Parliament and chairman of the agriculture committee. Obviously, your area has a lot of agriculture in it, and feels very strongly that.... Actually, I find it interesting that every single Manitoba rural member of Parliament outside of Churchill is a Conservative.

So I find it interesting when you claim to speak on behalf of farmers, but overwhelmingly, across the prairies, Conservatives represent the rural ridings. Could you explain this to me?

[Ian Robson]

I'm just as puzzled as you are.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!