Agriculture Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

How about the reduction of CO₂ emissions from the agriculture industry?

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

Well, we have it. As I said, we're a carbon sink.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

But there's no investment going into it.

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

There are ongoing investments all the time. We do research with the clusters. We have one with the grain growers to make use of crop rotations, and so on, to do exactly what you're talking about. It's the new, emerging growth that sequesters carbon in those crop rotations. We actually have a very good story to tell.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

But when it comes to investment, where's the money?

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

Those investments have been made. Now we're reaping the benefits of some of the investments.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

So you think that—

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

There's more work to be done, but industry is working with us on the next steps.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

How far along the road towards the 17% reduction in CO₂ emissions from the agriculture industry are we?

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

Oh, we're in good shape in the agricultural sector. As I said, we're a carbon sink. We have equipment that is far more energy-efficient than it ever was before. We're not tilling the land as we used to. We don't plough anything anymore; everything goes into standing crop. We're capturing moisture. We're using far less fertilizer than we ever did before. As I said, it's all about trace elements now. It's not about 150 pounds of N going in; it's about 50 pounds of N plus the trace elements.

There's a tremendous amount of work being done by government, backstopped by industry or vice versa, to lead us to a far better environmental footprint. We have a great story to tell. There's far less water being used—

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Why has the investment in renewable energy stopped?

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

It hasn't stopped; it's done in a different way. I'll give you a breakdown through the clusters.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Well, I asked the department to list the investments in renewable energy, and they came up with $9,000 last year.

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

Well, it depends on how you ask the question. We'll go back to take a look at your question. If you want a government response as to how we're addressing climate change, how we're adapting to it, and things like that, it would take months to put together and lots of pages, but I'm happy to undertake that work to make sure you have the answer you want.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much.

We'll move to Mr. Zimmer, for five minutes, please.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Minister, for coming before committee today.

I know you were up in Dawson Creek, up in my neck of the woods, in the B.C. Peace. Some of the farmers there talked about traceability. Initially it was looked at as a bit of boat anchor, something that they had to do. But the more they looked at it the more they realized it's a positive in terms of trade and it's definitely an advantage to Canadian producers. But also we noticed that you had announced that $7.5 million was being invested into that field. Could you speak to that amount of money and the positive that it really does bring?

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

That was the second investment when it comes to the Canadian cattle identification and we're going beyond that. It's all livestock now. This will build the capacity to put all the data together so that we actually have flow. Right now there's a separate system in Quebec, which is an excellent system. We've patterned the rest of the country on that, using that as an anchor. Now the data is being exchanged. As you know, cattle aren't born, raised, and slaughtered all in the same area. They move. They're very transient. So we're able to trace them now.

We have a growing recognition of the value of genomics throughout Canada so we have a good database when it comes to genomics. One of the major sectors, and I was just at Agribition this Monday, with buyers from all around the world. I know the stats for last year. I haven't seen them for this year yet because it's not over, but we had 800 representatives from 65 different countries at Agribition looking at genetics, every type of breed of livestock you could think of there. A lot of good contacts and sales were made. We continue to see genetics growing in demand in all the emerging markets like China as well as back to Europe. I mean, a lot of the initial cattle stocks, Hereford and Angus, came from Europe and were developed here with offshoots now to Simmental and Polled Hereford and all that and they're being bought back into Europe.

I met with a group from Great Britain at the show because they were buying Speckle Park, which of course is a breed of beef animal that was developed in my neck of the woods. They have a bit of a track record. They were coming back to renew some of their bulls and cows and continue to build that herd. The pool of resource here, when it comes to genomics and traceability.... Canada is now number one again, simply because of the work that we've done as a government working with industry. As you said, at first a lot of ranchers thought it's going to cost them $4 an animal so they weren't going to pay it. Now they look at it as a tool in order to continue to open up and access markets.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Speaking to that a little bit more, what does the world look at when they look at this traceability in terms of food security? The fact that we haven't heard anything negative shows to me that the system is working. Internationally, what do they look at as a positive?

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

There are two things. With the DNA work that's being done in Guelph and so on, we can trace it almost right back to cut by cut, but at the end of the day, having a traceability system allows us to get into food safety sensitive countries like Japan in a more fulsome way than some other countries. China, of course, is looking at that and the European Union as well. So that traceability system serves two things. If there's a recall we know where to look; we know where to go. If you're looking for a repeat of certain genetics coming up through the system—to give that marbling or that flavour or whatever—we now have access to go back and find that, and pay a premium to the producer to assess those marketplaces.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

There are many positives, for sure.

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

Yes, absolutely.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I just wanted to talk a little bit about our investments in different things, and I might answer Mr. Bevington's question about where we're putting our money. We talked about in the estimates, and my colleague Monsieur Lemieux spoke about this already, innovation expenditures. We see additional amounts of money, $30 million, but that's 30 million in additional dollars to a budget to bring it to $549 million.

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

Of course, it leverages the private sector as well, so there's a bigger pot to work with.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

For Mr. Bevington, that's $549 million in terms of innovation. I mean, it's a massive amount of money that's being utilized and provided by the government to help pay....

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

As a catalyst....