Agriculture Committee on Oct. 7th, 2014

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

They're going to try that. I'm just wondering if you have any comments and thoughts around how drones could help farmers out.

[Gerry Ritz, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Absolutely. There are a lot of those applications going on. Not too many farmers are going to buy their own. Some will, but you can hire agencies to come out and what they'll do is spot pest problems. They can spot colouration changes in your crop to let you know that you're missing a micronutrient. It's amazing.

It used to be the sky's the limit. Now we're taking that over too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much, Minister. I want to thank you for taking the time to be here, Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Anderson. I'm not sure if you're staying around for the second part, but we do have a number of witnesses coming in.

Thank you, Minister, for staying. We were a half an hour late getting started and actually, you stayed a little longer than an hour, which I very much appreciate, and I know the committee appreciates very much.

We will now break for a couple of minutes while we get the next witnesses in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you everyone for being fairly efficient in terms of getting settled. I apologize to the staff that are trying to get everybody's name and everybody organized. Just so that everyone knows, there is another committee booked for here at one o'clock, so we only have about a half an hour.

We have, from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Bill Anderson, executive director, plant health and biosecurity, who was here at the last meeting; Veronica McGuire, executive director, program, regulatory and trade policy; Anthony Parker, commissioner, plant breeders rights office.

From Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, we have again, Rosser Lloyd, director general, business risk management programs directorate, programs branch; and Martin Crevier, assistant director, financial guarantee programs division.

From the Department of Justice, we have Louise Sénéchal, general counsel and deputy executive director on behalf of agriculture and food inspection legal services; and Sara Guild, acting manager and senior counsel.

Thank you all for coming.

Folks, you have six minutes each to present. We'll have three presenters, six minutes each, and then we'll try to get in some short questions.

I'm not sure if we start with CFIA, or do we just go to questions? We'll go to questions.

I'm going to start with Madame Brosseau, for five minutes, please.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

There are going to be new licensing and registration systems for feeds and fertilizers. We know there have been changes and some restructuring when it comes to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the CFIA. I was wondering if you could comment on how these changes will be implemented and whether there are enough resources for those departments to manage with the changes proposed in Bill C-18.

[William Anderson, Executive Director, Plant Health and Biosecurity Directorate, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Mr. Chair, I can answer on behalf of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

More modern and effective approaches to mitigating the risks related to harmful substances, such as fertilizers and feeds, potentially focus more on prevention and systems approaches of managing the risks.

Right now, currently under the Feeds Act and Fertilizers Act, only the feeds and the fertilizers themselves are registered, not the facilities or operators that are manufacturing them.

The proposed enhancements going forward through the regulation-making authority provide for the ability to license registered operators or facilities that manufacture or sell these products intended for trade and commerce.

The current regulatory environment for feeds applies national standards for composition, safety, and effectiveness on the end product. Our experience in end-product oversight and regulation monitoring is not the most effective way to mitigate risks.

More and more we are seeing countries developing and modernizing the regulatory systems for feeds and fertilizers moving toward a more preventive approach and systems approaches which include hazard analysis, preventive control plans, and licensing as well as incorporating international standards where that can help.

We also see right now some of our trading partners incorporating import licensing regimes regarding feed. The United States has recently released its rules for animal feed production and import under its new Food Safety Modernization Act in which they will be requiring licensed facilities.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

My question was more in regard to you guys having enough resources. Will you be able to adapt and respond to these changes after seeing Bill C-18?

[William Anderson]

One of the advantages of having a systems approach is that you do not have to be following the focus and monitoring exclusively on the end product in order to measure compliance. When you can pull back earlier in the system and measure whether preventive control plans or measures that are put in place to mitigate are in fact working, you'll have greater assurances of safety.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

I was wondering if you can comment on UPOV 91. A lot of our trading partners have adopted UPOV 91. I was wondering if you could comment if there has been a larger capacity for innovation in terms of these new varieties among trading partners that have already adopted UPOV 91.

[Anthony Parker, Commissioner, Plant Breeders Rights Office, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

It would be my pleasure to answer that question.

It's very interesting. What we've seen are general trends when countries strengthen their intellectual property protection. Moving from having either no intellectual property protection, or from 78 to 91, some interesting things seem to happen. The level of investment goes up in plant breeding. The diversity of plant breeding for different species and crops also goes up. The number of breeders who are engaged in the activity of plant breeding tends to go up. Interestingly enough, with more competition, prices either level out or go down.

What we assume is going to happen here, and it should be no different from what we've observed in other countries, is that there's going to be more choice for Canadian farmers. We're going to see two streams of new varieties coming to market that increase investment domestically to bring new varieties or innovative varieties to Canadian farmers, but also greater confidence with foreign breeders to release their varieties into Canada with the strengthened intellectual property framework. That's really going to give Canadian farmers a lot of choice in what they can access to use on their farms.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you Mr. Anderson, Mr. Parker, and Madame Brosseau.

I'll go to Mr. Lemieux, for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you for being here with us today to talk about Bill C-18. I started my questioning to the minister just about plant breeders' rights. Interestingly enough, I had met with the delegation of members of Parliament from Taiwan earlier this year. They knew that Bill C-18 was coming and they expressed a concern. They are not a signatory to UPOV, any of the UPOVs actually, but Canada is of course going to be moving from UPOV 78 to UPOV 91. Their concern was whether their plant breeders would be protected if they sold into Canada.

I'll give you the example that we were talking about. Taiwan produces a breed of orchid that has proven to be very successful commercially. They'd like to know if Taiwanese orchid breeders sold into Canada certain traits, whether their plant rights would be protected through doing so because we've moved to UPOV 91. I'm wondering if you could address that.

[William Anderson]

Mr. Chairman, one of the more notable changes as proposed in this bill is an expansion of the definition of “country of the union”. It includes not only UPOV member countries now, but expands to members of the World Trade Organization as well. Once these changes come into force, all citizens, residents, or registered offices within a WTO member country would and could apply for protection in Canada, so that would include Taiwan.

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

Excellent, thank you for that clarification. I'm sure they will be delighted to hear your response.

Let me ask a question about the changes to the advanced payment program. Of course, this is a very valuable tool for farmers as it grants them easier access to credit through cash advances, but we're making changes through Bill C-18. One of the changes is talking about increasing the options that can be used to secure advances and allow for new types of repayments. I'm just wondering if, for the committee, you could explain the way things are now and how that might inhibit the freedom of a farmer to either secure a loan or repay a loan and what the change would be under Bill C-18 when it passes.

[Rosser Lloyd, Director General, Business Risk Management Programs Directorate, Programs Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

I'd be glad to take that question.

With respect to the options, currently a producer-guarantor secures an advance with the product itself once it's produced or with a business risk management program while it's in production. When the grain is in the field, we want to have a business risk management protecting that in case something goes wrong with the product in the field. Right now producers are limited to our business risk management program suite, agri-stability, agri-invest, agri-insurance. What we're noting, though, is that we're seeing more private products come out there in the world to protect producers from risk. We want to make sure that our programs can look at those types of programs as the ability to secure an advance. This provides a producer with not only flexibility as to the risk management product he uses, but should also result in greater dollar advances as well.

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

Okay, and how about on the repayment options?

[Rosser Lloyd]

Currently, a number of changes are going on, but I'll use one example.

A producer must provide a proof of sale when he repays an advance. The intent of the program was it was a marketing program and the producer was to sell the crop and repay the advance. However, we end up with situations that were described earlier, where the producer at the end of the year, for very good reasons, has decided not to market that year: the market is down; the basis is too wide; whatever the point may be, they decided to move into the next year.

With the amendments to our legislation we're allowing an administrator to recognize that their product is still in the bin; the producer has not sold it and not repaid it. The producer would then be able to reimburse the advance from whatever proceeds he may choose to use, should that be the sale of another product, whatever the case may be.

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

As of today, if he used corn for security, you're saying in effect to make his repayment he's forced to sell his corn, and it could be under disadvantageous circumstances. Now he can save his corn for sale at a future time, if that's what he chooses to do, but if he has cash from any other crop perhaps, or from anywhere, he can use that to pay off his advance. Is that what you're saying?

[Rosser Lloyd]

That's exactly the situation, yes.

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

Okay.

I have a question about the multi-year agreements. Could you contrast for the committee the difference between the way it is today and the way it would be vis-à-vis a multi-year commitment?

[Rosser Lloyd]

Right now we take applications from administrators of a program and producers themselves on a year-by-year basis. It's the same application every year. The producer provides the same information every year. It's a burdensome process.

What we're looking for in the future is to recognize that these producers and our administrators are clients year after year. We're looking to those multi-year agreements whereby we would recognize again that these guys are our clients year after year and would simply update the information that we need for that particular year, thus reducing the burden.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lloyd.

Now we'll go to Mr. Eyking,for five minutes, please.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you for coming here, folks.

I have three questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

You still have only five minutes.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I've been around this table long enough to know to get your questions in and hopefully they'll answer on time.

The minister alluded that we are going to have a system in place that they already have almost all around the world. Because we're going into this European trade agreement, this new system we're going to have, is a small organic farmer in the Ottawa Valley going to have the same system as a small farmer, say, outside Paris, France? Are we looking at the same kind of system, that both farmers are protected the same way, that they can reuse the seed and maintain their seeds if they're special seeds, heritage seeds, and things like that?

Your minister is talking quite a bit about how we're going to be like the rest of the world. Are our small growers here in Canada going to be like the small growers in France, with the same protections for their seed?