Agriculture Committee on Sept. 20th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Can you do that very quickly, Mr. Orb?

[Ray Orb]

Of course. In 30 seconds, getting into agriculture is a very expensive proposition, but many of the younger farmers now may be farming with their parents, using that as a succession plan.

I think younger farmers are very savvy about new technology. I just want to make mention of a company in Saskatchewan—not to advertise for them—called Seed Hawk that manufactures seeders. It is a planter. I haven't seen it yet, but they have developed an autonomous seeder that can go out and plant the crop by itself.

I think in rules of efficiency—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Sorry, Mr. Orb.

[Ray Orb]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

We'll have to cut you off there.

Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes. Thank you.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Orb, that's one of my favourite examples of the business that Norbert has developed there around autonomous vehicles. I saw the demonstration a couple of years ago, and I understand this company is moving along.

I want to focus on the role of the municipalities and the three orders of government working together, especially when it comes to broadband. In southwest Ontario, we have the SWIFT project, where the western wardens caucus has put together a not-for-profit that's received $180 million from the federal and provincial governments, $300 million total investment starting next year to cover 350 communities, including first nations, to create 3,000 points of presence.

When you're talking with the other municipal organizations across Canada, are there examples like that out west, or are you following the example in southwestern Ontario?

[Ray Orb]

We certainly looked at that example, and I have met many of those wardens and listened to them describe what they have done in creating good solid partnerships. I think Alberta also has some good examples of what they're doing, especially in southern Alberta, according to people who I have met and listened to as well.

I think it's somewhat different in every province. In Saskatchewan, of course, SaskTel has a monopoly, and they have done a better job. They are doing, I believe, quite a good job delivering high-speed broadband into the rural areas. There are a lot of different models. I think it all comes down to some federal funding, and I think the connecting Canadians program was the one that those partners used in Ontario.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes, we do need provincial funding, and we also need to have private partners. Everybody has to work together.

Also, this summer, I pulled together a meeting with the western wardens again and Community Futures. We also had John Nater, the Conservative member from Perth—Wellington. It was a non-partisan meeting. We talked about the role Community Futures can play across Canada in rolling out investment dollars as well as in mentorship programs for young entrepreneurs who could be looking at developing export markets.

Are you working with Community Futures? Do you see that as a further opportunity out west?

[Ray Orb]

My organization is not working directly with them, but I know that there are some rural municipalities and some urban municipalities that are working with them. They see it as a good program.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Yes, it's really all about partnerships. The federal government can't lift it all alone, especially getting into the smaller communities.

Thank you, Mr. Orb. I'll pivot over to Mr. Mains.

There's the Linamar-MacDon partnership now in place, the $1.2-billion purchase that Linamar made in Winnipeg, looking at joining manufacturing 4.0 with agriculture 3.0. MacDon is also creating product for John Deere under licence. There are export opportunities around manufacturing and some of these manufacturing opportunities from, in this case, automotive parts going into agricultural equipment manufacturing to combine the intelligence that's being developed on manufacturing 4.0.

Could you comment on that? Have you been following that? It looks like an exciting opportunity for western Canada.

[Howard Mains]

I was last through the MacDon plant about four years ago. Mr. MacDonald took me and somebody from John Deere through the plant at the time. I've not been there since, but certainly it's welcome to see an investment like that. As you've stated, they've carved out a niche in terms of the equipment attachments that they produce and also the swathers that they produce. They've carved out a niche that is world leading, and it's very nice to see but I'm not able to comment any further since I've not been in the plant.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

In terms of your members, this is an example where the University of Guelph is now working with the University of Manitoba, Conestoga College and potentially Red River College, looking at developing a workforce with some joint opportunities from the automotive sector to the agriculture sector.

In terms of the role the federal government might play in incenting these types of partnerships to develop, we're in some new territory here.

[Howard Mains]

Yes, and it all comes back to ensuring that you have the right skills on the production line.

A year or two ago, we had a John Deere dealer in town for a meeting, and we were talking about corn and soybean planters. He said at that time they were taking delivery of 40 planters. He said that 39 of them were different, and the only reason that two were the same was that one farmer was buying two.

This all goes back to the workforce and the process we have to have to support the manufacturing process, because the equipment is so customized now.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Orb, we've just announced $208 million for the western diversification fund. Are you currently working with FedDev agencies for these types of projects as well?

[Ray Orb]

We're not working on it ourselves, but we're aware of that program. We see it as a valuable program to be able to improve that kind of technology. I haven't toured the MacDon plant, but I did tour the Honey Bee plant in southwestern Saskatchewan where they're manufacturing headers. The technological improvements are just amazing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Orb.

Thank you, Mr. Longfield.

Mr. Drouin, you have six minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Mains and Mr. Orb for being with us. It's nice to see you again, Mr. Orb.

I feel your pain with the lack of access to the Internet. You drive half an hour away from Parliament Hill in a circle, and you will see the lack of access to the Internet. I know that part of the issue is that the demand for access has grown exponentially over the last 10 years. Systems have been built, and not to video-stream on your cellphones.

Talk to me a bit about SaskTel. I was in Saskatoon two weeks ago meeting with some folks, and they say they are using their telephones to download as opposed to using their Internet connections. You've mentioned that SaskTel is doing some great work. What types of partnerships are they growing? How do we relate that back to helping our agricultural companies export?

[Ray Orb]

SaskTel, of course, has a monopoly in Saskatchewan. There are some other service providers, mostly by satellite. To my knowledge, SaskTel doesn't have a lot of partnerships. They are announcing this on their own. They are using some of the federal funding to be able to do that, but that's more for hard-wire delivery to homes and residences. Urban Saskatchewan is the place they're touching on mostly, but unfortunately it doesn't often go too far out of the towns and villages or the cities into the rural areas. That's a bit of a problem.

More people are relying on the cellphone towers, using their cellphones and the apps on them. That's unfortunate. The phones have more capability than they had even a few years ago. Still, people need to be able to use their laptops and their iPads to be able to adapt to the modern technology. It's still problematic in Saskatchewan.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I think it took 60 years to build the telephone infrastructure in Canada, so obviously we want to shorten that cycle for Internet because Canadians will be screaming. But we need to leverage those dollars, as my colleague Mr. Longfield said. I think there's a lack of $10 billion of investment in Canada, with regard to making sure that everybody would have access to Internet.

I completely agree with you, and it's not just a Saskatchewan problem. It's a rural Canada problem.

Mr. Mains, you made a comment that's really interesting to me, whereby farmers will become more data managers as opposed to being in their barns and their fields. I have had those conversations with older farmers and they've told me I'm crazy, but I've seen it with my own eyes. Just on the dairy robotics, I was helping a farmer transfer some cows and all we had to do was to get them used to the robot and essentially they were trained. The farmer barely has to step into the barn once the cows have been trained to go to the robots. The only issue is that some cows bully other cows and stop them from going to the milk robot, but they're working on that.

Speaking of data, and you've mentioned aggregation of data, what do you see as the role of the government to help with that particular file? I've heard some farmers complain that some companies will hold on to their data and they don't have access to that data. Should the government play a role in that space in aggregating all that data? It is information could help in future studies and future technology development.

[Howard Mains]

When I was in Saskatchewan earlier this year for a round table meeting with the ministers of agriculture out there about other matters, we got into a discussion about data. The ownership of and access to that data are an emerging issue. There are a couple of models that are flowing out. There's what I would call the private sector model and a co-operative model.

The report I referred to, which I'll share with the committee via the clerk, speaks to who will own that relationship in the future. One of the things this report speaks to is that it may very well be that there's a new entrant. If you take a look at whether its Uber in the car-sharing economy or Amazon in the retail economy, it may very well be that there's a new entrant in that whole data field, because there's an extraordinary amount of data that's going to be generated. As I said, a combine generates five gigabytes today. In the future, it's exponential.

In terms of the role the federal government can play, there are certainly provisions under PIPEDA that protect the privacy interests of the owners of the data. That already exists. I'm not sure what other provisions may be required of the federal government, but it's something we all need to keep an eye on because it's huge.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

On the pharmaceutical side, we see a bit of the open science movement, where pharmaceuticals have realized that gathering the basic data costs a lot of money and they all share a common—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Mr. Drouin, we're out of time. Thank you so much.

Mr. Berthold, I will allow you to ask one last question.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Mains, I just have one question.

We talked a lot about agriculture products for exportation, but what about manufacturing equipment and exportation? Can you just address that part of it, in terms of where we stand?

[Howard Mains]

The Canadian manufacturers of agricultural equipment tend to be very successful. When you go to a website for MacDon, for example, or others, the website is in two languages, English and Russian.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

For me as a French speaker....