Agriculture Committee on Nov. 1st, 2011

[Peter MacLeod]

There are research collaborations that are formalized, especially between universities and our industry, to develop certain technologies. In that instance, innovation typically takes place at the university, and then it's sold or shared with the industry to help commercialize, because that's where the expertise lies from our member companies.

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

Okay. That's good.

Mr. Bell, you're here today. We all like going to farmers' markets, there's no doubt about that, for their fresh produce.

Of course, I'd probably argue that Ontario probably has the premium produce, seeing as I'm an Ontario MP, but you'd probably argue the contrary.

[A voice]

He's never been to Alberta.

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

I'm sure you've had a chance to take a look at the science and innovation portion of the first Growing Forward framework. How do you see your organization or a pan-Canadian organization such as yours being able to use funds in the science and innovation portion to further your goals?

[Jon Bell]

We would like to see those types of funds go into innovative tools that the local market vendor can use, and that could certainly be across Canada.

Science is not our strong point; we're not researchers. We are the end users of that science, but we take it and use it to the best of our abilities to improve our market share. Moneys going to organizations to create those tool kits will allow farmers to create markets that are better adapted to utilizing the product.

I think the member over here brought up the topic of cooperatives and hubs. Those sorts of innovative techniques will require some movement in regulation and in people's thoughts to get those types of new marketing situations happening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Your time has expired.

Mr. Lampron wanted some help, and I believe Émie Désilets is going to come up here.

Ms. Désilets, I'll let you respond to the question.

[Émie Désilets, Scientific Coordinator, Dairy Farmers of Canada]

I am going to answer in French.

I would like to further respond to the more specific questions on areas for improvement, especially regarding the administration of clusters.

It was a challenge to learn the rules and vocabulary, such as vote 1 and vote 10 or to adjust to the government's fiscal years, with appropriations that are fixed and non-transferable from year to year. Those are things we have managed to get a handle on, but we had to adjust. It took time to understand the rules ourselves first, and then to be able to explain them to others and to ensure they are adopted by those who do the research for us, primarily universities. We have to say that people at the research centres of Agriculture Canada are already very familiar with the internal rules.

That's why there were delays. Announcing the program itself and setting it up afterwards required a lot of time and caused delays. Yes, ultimately, we will be able to fulfill the contract, but we will do so in some other way. For example, since we want to achieve our objectives in a shorter period of time, research in universities will be conducted by technicians or professionals, and unfortunately not by students. Students will not be able to do it because school is still out. Also, recruiting students sometimes takes a long time, and they sometimes work less quickly than technicians. But it is still unfortunate that those circumstances have forced us to cut training for new students.

By knowing those things beforehand, we could plan for them. Those things take time to plan. In addition, we would be much better prepared because we would already be familiar with that whole structure.

As for challenges, I will not get into the details of administrative rules or accounting rules. I will only say that imposing government rules is a challenge. We already had our ways of doing things, but we can adapt. However, it can be difficult to impose those new rules to the whole Canadian university system. You have to convince people and that takes time and goodwill.

There should also be an element of trust. We already have the experience and background; we already have our ways of managing research projects. So rather than asking us to constantly provide evidence for everything, why not have an audit? It would be easier than asking us to provide all the information and all the evidence by set deadlines, whether quarterly or otherwise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Mr. Rousseau for five minutes.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I have a question for Mr. Lampron.

You say that, because of research, herds have produced higher yields; there are fewer cows per herd but dairy production is higher. That means that research has been done for the scientific component of Growing Forward 2. But are there enough programs that provide an incentive for researchers to work in areas like that, trying to make herds more productive, for example?

[Pierre Lampron]

Are you asking whether there are enough researchers in this area?

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I am asking you whether there are enough researchers and whether government programs have incentives to encourage researchers to focus on specific areas like the one we are talking about.

[Pierre Lampron]

Continuity in funding is certainly what draws researchers. Research like this is done over the long term. I think there are incentives because the research has gone on for a long time. It is important to continue. If we stop the research for a few years, that is when researchers are going to leave.

So I would say that there are enough incentives.

[Émie Désilets]

The dynamics of dairy production research in Canada are good. But even so, researchers need money to do the work. If they don't have funding for some reason, they are in fact going to go in an area of research that is funded.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

So you are saying that, if there is not enough funding, they can change their area of research.

[Émie Désilets]

Of course. If universities do not provide them with funding so that they can work, they will have to look for grants in the private and public sectors.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

In other words, Agriculture Canada's next Growing Forward 2 program should include more incentives for some areas of research.

[Émie Désilets]

That's correct. Research areas often have to be linked to industry priorities. Academics work to move the industry forward. We are often ready to invest in those priorities but, in return, we need funding for the rest of the work we are doing.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for Mr. Bell.

Most of the witnesses have said that marketing is the weak link in the innovation chain in Canada. Under Growing Forward, the Developing Innovative Agri-Products initiative provides funding for projects that fill the gap between discoveries and a product getting to the market.

Do you think this program does a good job of improving marketing in the innovation chain? Do you think funding under this program is sufficient, especially for small producers?

[Jon Bell]

I feel that I don't have enough depth or experience to answer a lot of your questions, particularly about whether funding is enough. I mean, it would be easy to say that funding is never enough, but that's not being reasonable.

We're a very small group and we basically have not had access to very much funding, certainly at the federal level. I'm not sure about other farmers' market organizations across Canada. We do get our funding through IAF, investment agriculture funds, in British Columbia. We do get funding, but we have to find matching funding. That does make it difficult for us.

Do we have sufficient funding? I can't really answer that question honestly.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

My next question is for Mr. MacLeod and Mr. Prouse.

Do you think farmers have enough access to scientific discoveries and technological innovations through Growing Forward? In other words, can scientific discoveries be easily put into practice on the ground?

[Peter MacLeod]

You're quite right. One of the gaps we see--and I see when I'm working with farmers and farm communities--is the lack of, or not enough, transfer technology, whether it's from our industry or academia through the university system. There's a gap between taking that innovation and making sure it's adaptable to the farm. There has been a lot of reduction in staff provincially, mainly among those who do this technology transfer, and at the federal level through some of the research farms across Canada.

Certainly that's a critical link. If all of the great innovations in science and technology aren't available for adopting by farmers, they will be lost. We really support education of the technologists who are needed in the human resource area to bring that technology from our companies or from the universities to the field.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Rousseau.

We'll now move to Mr. Payne for five minutes.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Through you, Chair, I want to welcome everybody here today. It's very interesting information that you have provided to us.

And I apologize for sneaking out; I had a constituent call, so I had to talk to them. They had sort of an urgent thing going on. My apologies for missing part of the presentations.

Having said that, there were a couple of things I wanted to address. I guess I'll start with Mr. Lampron.

I was looking at your presentation here on page five, and particularly the bottom part where you talk about a “program for farmers, delivered by farmers, involving other industry partners”. In particular, you talk about the flexibility in terms of certainly what we're facing in terms of some potential reduction in allocation of funding.

I'm wondering if you could give us a real good flavour of how you see that flexibility happening, who that should be working with, and if you have any particular projects that you believe are very important as part of that process.

[Pierre Lampron]

That is obviously an administrative issue. As we said, the organization in charge of managing all that could be more flexible. That sort of goes back to what Émie was saying just now.

[Émie Désilets]

I could maybe add that, based on how the Dairy Research Cluster program is set up, a work plan is approved for a five-year period, and very few changes can be made along the way. Since we do not have five years to complete this program, it is easier to stick to the initial plan. If we plan to do it over five years, we must absolutely determine the work to be done in those five years, but we cannot always know that in advance. The work might get done in the first two years, after which we will have to make adjustments.

So there should be more flexibility, especially for this aspect. We were not greatly affected this time because we did not have five years. But if we have a five-year timeline for another program, we would need to have this type of flexibility.