Agriculture Committee on Feb. 5th, 2013

[The Chair]

On the same point of order, Mr. Storseth.

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

My concern in regard to committee business would be that it has been the NDP's policy to try to constantly get the same witnesses to show up. What they're doing today is trying to deceive the committee by putting forward witnesses who actually represented these organizations, and then they would bring the witnesses of the organizations forward in the future. It's counterintuitive to this study, and it's actually trying to stack the deck.

What we'd like to see when we're trying to bring in individual farmers is not activists who are already well-known on the national stage, as Mr. Wells is. We'd like to see mom and pop organizations, real farmers. It's not that they're not real farmers, but they're well-spoken activists.

[The Chair]

Mr. Allen, on the same point of order.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

It behooves me to ask the chair to do some work. It's not my nature to ask him to take on stuff, but, Chair, what I'd ask you to do is go back to the beginning of this session in the fall and pull the witness list to this committee, and let's see which organizations and who belongs to whom....

I've been at this committee since last September and beyond, and I'll guarantee to this committee that the vast majority of witnesses belong to organizations that would be more favourable to the government's position. Now, they are entitled to have more. There are more of them. They are the majority. But I would tend to think you are going to find that indeed they may be greater.

If what the government is suggesting is that we, as the opposition, no longer should call witnesses from certain organizations—because they are either affiliated with them or not, or may have been in the past—let them put the organizations on the table. We'll put on the table the ones we won't want to talk to either. Then we can figure out who eventually we do want to talk to.

Either we do actually want to have an open session that talks to all kinds of folks who we don't agree with on any particular thing or we don't. And I'll make this abundantly clear as the lead from the official opposition: there is no attempt from our perspective to put witnesses on the list and try to hide their affiliation. If I wanted to do that, we wouldn't have asked Mr. Wells or Mr. Robson, with Mr. Storseth, Mr. Richards, Mr. Payne, Mr. Lemieux—and Mr. Hoback, who was here—and the chair, who actually know them all personally. We would have asked Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith, who maybe you didn't know, if we were trying to hide their affiliations.

Clearly we didn't try to hide anybody. The inference that somehow we are doing something along those lines is patently false.

The other side has its time, as you have said, Mr. Chair. The members are entitled to use it as they find appropriate in whatever way they do. I guess I would look at the committee and say I don't challenge their witnesses as to which organizations...but again, that's my choice. The other side has its choice too.

[The Chair]

I have two more people I'm going to ask to comment. One will be Mr. Richards, and then I'll go to Mr. Valeriote, and then I'll make a comment.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On this same point of order, Mr. Atamanenko mentioned some other organizations. To my recollection, I don't ever recall an executive member or a director of those organizations appearing here without being listed as a member of those organizations.

To the same thing Mr. Allen was commenting about, by no means is anyone on the government side suggesting we wouldn't want members of organizations, the NFU or otherwise. We just want to see, when individuals who are directors or executive members of organizations are here, that they are listed as being executives or directors of the organizations they are appearing from, as other organizations have done in the past.

[The Chair]

Go ahead, Mr. Valeriote.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think we are all on very thin ice when we fail to focus on attacking problems, investigating policy and platform, and instead attack people. I think we have to move away from attacking people and focus on problems, policy, and platforms.

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

I appreciate all the advice around the table. When people were invited to attend, I asked for all sides to present individuals, regardless of who Mr. Wells or Mr. Robson or anybody represents. It probably should be on the agenda, but all the same, they were invited as individuals to present their positions, and I think it's important we ask them that and get some information.

We are studying grains and oilseeds and how they impact our producers, so I'm going to continue the questions. I think Mr. Lemieux had the floor.

You have about three and a half minutes.

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

Thanks again, Chair.

Let me conclude my thought, because I think a few of the comments are missing the point. It's not attacking people. It's just that if people hold executive positions, that should simply be listed on the agenda for the day. They should not just be listed as individuals.

I think the reason is that, yes, we might know this, Chair, but there's a much wider audience than just who is sitting in this committee room. This goes over the Internet. People can listen in. Canadians can follow what's going on, and they don't necessarily know who is who.

You actually have a policy, Chair, of not inviting individuals, and I support you in that policy. I would encourage us to continue with your policy.

Now to a particular question. I would like to ask a very supply-chain-related question, because I know our conversation has gone off the supply chain in some instances. That has to do with low-level presence.

I ask about low-level presence because it's a policy we're advocating as Canada. We find zero-tolerance contamination, if you want to call it that, is very expensive. It has an impact on the supply chain because you can have entire shipments turned around for very low levels of contamination.

I want to ask Mr. Wells what his personal opinion is on the issue of low-level presence in terms of policy.

[Stewart Wells]

Thanks for the question.

It's a very difficult topic area. I personally believe there should be zero tolerance. But in practical terms, the promoters of genetically modified technology tried to insist at the outset that it wouldn't happen, that there just wouldn't be contamination, that there wouldn't be gene flow, and that there wouldn't be pollen flow. That's turned out, of course, to be absolutely wrong. So it's a very difficult question.

I have a lot of sympathy for the importers and the consumers who want to follow a zero-tolerance policy.

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

Let me just say as well that I'm not convinced it's just a GM issue. For example, when I think of organics, organics would suffer from a zero-tolerance policy as well, because you could have an organic shipment, of course, that's moved through a common rail car that hasn't been properly cleaned or completely cleaned, or through trucking facilities or whatever mechanisms move that organic product. If there is low-level or very low-level contamination, an organic farmer would suffer, and that's not GM-related. So what about the organic farmer?

[Stewart Wells]

You're correct in that there are all sorts of other problems. There are low-level contaminants from pesticides, for instance, that turn up from time to time in organic production, and the organic farmers and the organic consumers have to work their way through that and try to pinpoint the source of that contamination. That is a good question.

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

Would you support a low-level presence policy for organic farmers? I'm thinking of this from a supply chain point of view.

[Stewart Wells]

No, I still wouldn't, because first and foremost, we have to put the consumers at the top. The consumers are telling us, in terms of genetic modification, that either they have a zero-tolerance policy or they want mandatory labelling. We have to put the consumers first or none of us will be in business.

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

But what would you say to the organic farmer who has very low-level contamination for reasons that are not his fault? Would you say, “Well, sorry about that completely lost shipment, sorry you're not going to earn any revenue at your farm gate, sorry for all of the overhead you've incurred to be organic”? It's very low-level presence. We're not talking about high-level presence; we're talking about low-level presence. In other words, it's a very low threshold, but it's not zero tolerance.

[Stewart Wells]

Yes, I agree it's a very significant problem, and not one that's easy to deal with.

You can imagine, bringing it right back to the farm level, how surprised I was to find out 15 years ago, when the first semi trailer came onto our farm to pick up organic production, that the semi trailer had cleaned itself out by leaving the slide gates open at the bottom of the trailers, driving to my farm and hoping that any seeds in that trailer would drop out onto the road before they got to my farm.

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

That's my point.

[Stewart Wells]

It's a tough problem.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I welcome the witnesses to a cold day in Ottawa and a hot day at the agriculture committee.

First of all, we have been talking a bit about the Wheat Board and obviously the grains and oilseeds, and I know some of my colleagues have talked about the sales.

I just wonder, Mr. Wells and Mr. Robson, during this last period, since August 1, you were able to sell any of your grains if you used independents or you used the Wheat Board.

[Ian Robson]

I used independent marketing.

I understand you think there's a Wheat Board left there. It's a lumpen and lame excuse for the farmer-directed Wheat Board that we had before, which gave us a $10- or $20-per-acre advantage in the marketplace.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Wells.

[Stewart Wells]

In my case, since the Wheat Board was killed—

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

It wasn't killed.