Evidence of meeting #114 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farmers.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Lisa Ashworth  Director, Region 6, Board of Directors, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick
Shawn Brook  President, Issues Ink
Devyn Brook  Community Manager, Do More Agriculture Foundation, Issues Ink
Eduardo Huesca  Community Outreach and Program Coodinator, Migrant Farm Worker Program, Hamilton, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers Inc.
Bev Shipley  Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC
Michelle Tew  Occupational Health Nurse, Hamilton Clinic, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers Inc.

9:25 a.m.

Liberal

Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC

Ms. Tew, how many years have you been working in this field? I would like to know whether you have seen a change in the culture of farmers. Are there many more farmers seeking mental health assistance help or services, or is the situation the same?

9:25 a.m.

Occupational Health Nurse, Hamilton Clinic, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers Inc.

Michelle Tew

Again, I don't specifically work in the mental health field, but I think your question is whether there is more openness around mental health issues. I cannot say that I have any statistics to support that, but I think the material that has been presented by the witnesses and by the organizations that have programs do identify that there is more discussion around mental health issues, specifically in the Quebec model. I'm very impressed by it.

One of the quotes from one of the people who presented from that program was that the closer we are to the farmers, the closer we are to talking to them, the more they come to us for help. I think creating that opportunity for discussion and support is really important.

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

Eva Nassif Liberal Vimy, QC

My next question is for Mr. Huesca.

There is a labour shortage among farmers, and you are dealing with migrant workers. Do you have any data on migrant workers in terms of mental health services? Do these workers have access to the same services as Canadians? Tell us about the barriers that migrant workers face in this regard.

9:30 a.m.

Community Outreach and Program Coodinator, Migrant Farm Worker Program, Hamilton, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers Inc.

Eduardo Huesca

Again, we collaborated with researchers who have started to really bring forward a lot of this research. I think a lot of the time they experience a lot of the same factors that employers are experiencing or that farmers are experiencing, which are the industry pressures that trickle down to them as well. If an employer has to finish harvesting and there's that pressure to get all of the harvest done, those workers will feel the same pressures. There are a lot of similarities. That's why having conversations that connect and identify those similarities would be fruitful.

I also think migrant farm workers experience other stressors as well through their immigration status and their isolation in being in a different country, which we've mentioned as well. I think there are definitely differences and similarities. I think having the opportunity to have different groups understand both the differences and similarities would be really fruitful moving forward.

If an employer really understands some of the pressures that the migrant farm workers are feeling, that relationship may have space to have a bit of empathy and vice versa. A worker who might not really know the employer has a lot of pressures falling down on them might say, “You know he owns the farm, he's well-off,” because in their countries owning a farm would be a completely different experience. In them understanding a bit more about the pressures that employers face, that farmers face, I think the workers would also gain a new perspective.

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Thank you, Mrs. Nassif.

Thank you, Mr. Huesca.

Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes.

October 30th, 2018 / 9:30 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you, and thanks to the witnesses.

I'll try to be as careful with my time as I can. I was on an organic farm this summer. It was harvesting weeds at the time. The migrant workers were there. There was a crew of about 50. The weeds were taller than the people who were harvesting them. They had machetes, and they were in lines trying to get through the crop. A month later, the carrots were doing wonderfully, the weeds were gone, but in the time of stress the farmer had said, “I've never seen weeds like this before. Our farm has never experienced this before.”

Thinking of the stress on the people who are manually harvesting these weeds and are in a different country, how do we reach out to them? Whether it's through the employer, whether it's through a shift boss who's from the migrant community, how do we connect in to that?

9:30 a.m.

Community Outreach and Program Coodinator, Migrant Farm Worker Program, Hamilton, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers Inc.

Eduardo Huesca

I think there are a lot of groups who are active in this picture. Obviously, we always think about the employer and the supervisor on the farm. There are a lot of initiatives that also happen in the community that have provided migrant workers with a lot of space to de-stress, to socialize and to have other aspects in their experience other than the hard work.

Oftentimes, churches are a good in, so when we first started working our program to try to connect with migrant workers, churches were a very big part of that. We would connect with them and they would give us almost an access to meet the community. The churches and community groups were really giving workers that space to relax and de-stress. There are libraries that have organized Skype calls, something so basic, so that people could talk to their families.

I do think that on the farm is so important because that's where they're spending most of their time. I think it really becomes imperative to have supervisors who are very well trained and have an understanding of mental health and stress, so they can really support the workers they're overseeing as well.

9:30 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Terrific, thank you.

I'll go over to Winnipeg.

The Do More Ag Foundation has a website that's showing an amazing number of services—almost overwhelming. There are 13 nationwide services, six training programs, at least one service per province and territory for people to access. I'm picturing myself as somebody who's in a mental health crisis looking at that website going, where do I go? How do I access the right service for me?

I'm picturing something that our government's developed for small businesses, innovation.canada.ca, where a small business can say what their issue is, what they're trying to do, how they're trying to accomplish it, and the website helps to direct the small business to either trade commission services or funding services or innovation services.

It seems like the Do More Ag Foundation has a really good basis, but I'm not sure that sending in an email at the bottom of the page is the best way to connect with people in crisis. People in crisis might not be thinking as clearly as other people, and they're vulnerable and overwhelmed. Is this something that you've been looking at? Is it something that we could have as a recommendation in our report, to develop some type of portal to help direct people more carefully to the services that they need?

9:35 a.m.

Community Manager, Do More Agriculture Foundation, Issues Ink

Devyn Brook

Absolutely. I think that's a really important conversation to be having.

Also, I will point out that on our website we do explicitly state that we are not mental health professionals. It's imperative to know that's not our skill set. We are the connection to those resources. I would absolutely take any recommendation for making that a little more accessible, in a way, for somebody who is in crisis and does come to that landing page. I'll most certainly go and check out that website as well to see the platform you've created there.

I think that's a really great conversation to be starting. How can we make portals that are a little more accessible to somebody who is in crisis and maybe make them feel a little less overwhelmed with the number of resources that are out there? You caught us right at the time when we're in the process of revamping our entire web design, too, so check back in two weeks and let me know what you think.

9:35 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

I will indeed.

Last year we had a mental health round table in Ottawa, and we're hoping to have another one this spring. If I wasn't studying this, I wouldn't know what was out there, and I'm just trying to picture how we promote this. For the farmers, they're on, let's say, seed pages or market information pages. How do we push the information to them? That all takes money in terms of advertising budgets, and that might be something we could hear about as well, if you're going through the revamp and need resources.

We're studying this as a committee. Maybe you could make some recommendations to us on that.

9:35 a.m.

Community Manager, Do More Agriculture Foundation, Issues Ink

Devyn Brook

Absolutely.

9:35 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you.

We've talked about women in mental health, and thanks for that. I always think of New Brunswick as the broadband capital of Canada, after Frank McKenna did a lot of work on broadband. You talked about how important that is to connect Canada. Is that a local or a national thing that you were thinking about?

9:35 a.m.

Director, Region 6, Board of Directors, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick

Lisa Ashworth

I'll give you a very local example. We're remote, and we have a very small high school. Therefore, we don't have subjects offered. Our kids are expected to do online education. I thought our Internet was bad until a mom told me that her child had dial-up.

9:35 a.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Wow.

9:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Sorry, Ms. Ashworth, I'm going to have to cut you off. Perhaps you'll have another—

9:35 a.m.

Director, Region 6, Board of Directors, Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick

Lisa Ashworth

That's okay.

It's bad.

9:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

We have Mr. Dreeshen for six minutes.

9:35 a.m.

Conservative

Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB

Thank you very much.

With regard to the broadband study, I know that Mr. Longfield and I spent a long time discussing that, so we're well aware of the concerns for rural and remote Canadians.

We are nearing the end of this study. I'd just like to thank the amazing women who have helped promote mental wellness in agriculture, those who have opened that door just a little bit so that the rest of us can get a glimpse of what a healthy state of mind could actually be.

I also want to thank my fellow committee members for agreeing to this study. I introduced this back on Bell Let's Talk Day, and I'm humbled to see where it has gone and how we've been able to bring this discussion into the open.

Last weekend I attended the Ag for Life Harvest Gala in Calgary. My wife was supposed to go with me, but I was at the gala and she was finishing the harvest. There is a lot of stress, but one thing that was brought up at the Ag for Life event was that the last project that they had done was on farm safety. This year the theme is going to be on farm education. Like the rest of us, I think that educating Canadians about how food is produced, about the amazing research and innovation that's being developed to ensure that we have the safest and the most secure food supply on earth, is important to ag producers. Of course, this is what matters to farmers. It's a narrative that I believe should be presented to our fellow Canadians. Groups like Ag for Life and Do More Ag need to be championed, and governments must ensure that they champion a “do no harm” strategy to help us so that we can prevent the demonization of our agricultural industry.

In that, we've talked about and had different groups of people who have come to talk about trade, non-tariff trade barriers, and issues that are brought up to protect other people's interests in other countries. We have the similar type of thing that occurs even with products within our own country as we demonize one group, as we set one group against another in order for them to promote what it is that they do.

As for the other things that governments do—on the taxation side of things, the carbon tax, which is tens of thousands of dollars that are going to be put towards agriculture—there is no extra margin to deal with these types of things. We compete internationally. That's what we sell our products into. Other things, from front-of-package labelling changes to the food guide, all come from thoughts that seem like a good idea from the outside, but they don't show understanding of exactly what is happening on the field.

I would hope that organizations—the ones that have appeared here and also other organizations—would be encouraged to present more information to us so that, as we deal with this study, we can get some of the views and solutions for that.

I'd like to address my question to Devyn. I followed you for a long time. I respect the work that you and other organizations have done as you've spearheaded this, and so many other groups have come to deal with this. What can we do, as far as an educational promotion of agriculture, so that the generations of separation between urban and rural Canadians can be addressed, and so that we can, as Canadians, work together on a solution for this amazing natural resource that we have?

9:40 a.m.

Community Manager, Do More Agriculture Foundation, Issues Ink

Devyn Brook

My history has been in working with kids, actually, so I've been designing programming for how to bring mental health into the conversation in the classroom, too. When we think about the future of agriculture, I think that a lot of it is actually about preparing the next generation that's moving into it with a whole new skill set to be equipped, excited and participatory in a whole new conversation.

Any social movement that has happened in the past has not been about fighting against the old. I think that we really need to move away from that in the conversation of mental health and really move into this conversation of creating a whole new possibility that we invite people into. I believe really strongly that this gets to be created through the younger generations that are moving forward.

9:40 a.m.

Conservative

Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB

I appreciate that, because, as I've told many people, I spent 34 years as a math and science teacher to support my farming habit. That was a critical part. The thing I'm seeing now is that we have to educate the teachers, because they, again, are getting further and further away. They'll hear something coming from an anti-farm group or this social media presentation and think, “That's great. I want to tell my kids about this.”

These groups are very well-organized, as they will have classroom projects and everything else that they're supposed to look at, but the other side doesn't have that. Hopefully, we can build on that, so that we have something that can go to teachers' conventions, so that there are plug and play types of programs that they can have. However, when you do that, you're going to find that the others are going to up their game. The critical part is for us to try to find ways of getting into the universities and dealing with teacher education.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.

Unfortunately, this is all the time we have. I want to really thank the panel for being here today with your passionate testimonies. It's all going to be part of our report.

Mr. Dreeshen.

9:45 a.m.

Conservative

Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB

My only comment is that we invite more people to come up with recommendations.

9:45 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

We will deal with that. We're going to go into our business session.

[Proceedings continue in camera]