Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #115 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.
Evidence of meeting #115 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.
9:15 a.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Alistair MacGregor
Thank you very much, Mr. Phelps.
With the committee's indulgence, I'll take a couple of minutes for my regular turn.
Mr. van den Heuvel, you mentioned in your opening statement that you're a dairy farmer, a farm of several generations, I believe. As a farmer in our supply-managed sectors.... We heard a lot about the uncertainty that farmers face. You made specific mention of shifting government programs. You mentioned the temporary foreign worker program that farmers rely on. I think we've also heard from farmers about business risk management programs and so on.
I'm curious about the impact of recent trade negotiations from your perspective as a farmer in our supply-managed sector. I'm thinking specifically of CETA, the CPTPP and now the USMCA.
Do you have any comments about the impact of those trade deals on our supply-managed sectors, specifically with uncertainty and stress?
9:15 a.m.
Director and Past President, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
Yes, absolutely.
In a nutshell, it's going to have a huge effect. It's going to be hugely detrimental to our industry.
Our government of whatever political stripe that negotiates these trade deals has to stop using agriculture as a pawn when it comes to negotiating. When you look at every major trade deal that has happened, these three major trade deals, CETA, CPTPP, and the new NAFTA, USMCA, agriculture was always the last one to be resolved, specifically supply management. Why is that? They know these other countries want access to our market, so we're going to hold that off and we know we're going to give up 2% or 3%, or whatever.
Our own president of the Dairy Farmers of Nova Scotia used a good analogy, that supply management is like a tire. When it's fully inflated it works well. You can let a little air out of it and give up a little percentage here and there, and the tire still works, but not quite as efficiently. The next one comes along and a little more is let out, and we lose market share and dollars out of our pockets. We lose income. The tire still works, but eventually it gets to the point when you let enough air out, the whole thing blows up.
When we look at our governments and we see they're negotiating trade deals and using our industry, our sector particularly, as the last negotiating point, that doesn't leave us in a very good place. We brace ourselves. We go through these trade deals with uncertainty. They constantly tell us, yes, we're going to protect, we're going to support. In the end, they never do.
That weighs heavily on us. We're losing millions of dollars. That has ramifications not just on our farms, but in our communities as well. Economic spinoff there is lost, at least three to one and as high as eight to one are the numbers I hear.
We lose 3% market share in this deal, compounded on the 3% on the last deal, compounded on.... They put out numbers of 10% lost market share...closer to 18%. Does anybody here want to take an 18% pay cut? I don't see too many hands going up.
That's what we're faced with, and we have no control over that. That hurts. We want and need the support.
9:20 a.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Alistair MacGregor
Thank you for that.
We'll now move to the Liberals.
Mr. Drouin, go ahead for six minutes.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here.
Mr. van den Heuvel, you mentioned farm safety in Nova Scotia and access to tools. I'm wondering what the uptake is on the access to tools specifically for mental health. Do you have that number? Do we know if farmers are using those tools?
9:20 a.m.
Director and Past President, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
I don't have the actual number here in front of me, but I'll make sure that the office follows up and gets you those statistics. We do know that it is a well-run and well-utilized program. There has been lots of uptake and we've heard personal testimony from people who have used it and benefited from it. I'll make sure to follow up and get that to you.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Where I'm coming from is that I have chatted with doctors in psychology. They say that a helpline is helpful for maybe 10% of that particular population, and then there are those who will want to have social workers visit them and that will work for them. I think it's important for this committee to understand that we shouldn't make recommendations based on only one particular approach but should be open to those different approaches.
Speaking of social workers on farms and visiting them, we've heard, and I think I've heard you clearly say, that the buy-in for farmers is important. If that social worker was a farmer before, then they can really connect with that particular person. Is that something that's offered in Nova Scotia? Do you know if there are social workers who actually visit farmers proactively?
9:20 a.m.
Director and Past President, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
No, there are not to my knowledge.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I know that in Quebec they do that, and I think we've heard from many witnesses that that is something which would potentially be helpful.
On the national approach, we often talk about Growing Forward 1 and Growing Forward 2, the Canadian agricultural partnerships that were negotiated. We see five sectors that should be talked about, but mental health is never in there. As you know, mental health is a shared responsibility. Mostly the services are offered by provincial governments, but those are negotiated with provincial governments when we do that. Do you believe that this should be included in that?
9:20 a.m.
Director and Past President, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
Yes, absolutely. As Fred alluded to, our national spending on health care lags far behind that of other countries. We need access to the tools and the resources to be able to help our farmers.
As you have said, it is a shared responsibility. It's not only rural Nova Scotia or rural Saskatchewan, Alberta or whatever, or that rural Canada should pay for this because that's where we happen to live. We feed the rest of the population, so there is a shared responsibility, I believe, for everybody to be part of the solution.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Phelps, based on your experience, do you know what some of the provinces are doing to help farmer mental health? I mentioned the example in Quebec and we know about Nova Scotia, but what about other provinces?
9:25 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Social Workers
Unfortunately, I will give a twofold answer again.
I think that mental health needs to be rolled into primary care. It's not rolled into primary care in the delivery of the provinces and territories. Each province and territory addresses mental health in its own way, but it's not integrated into primary care.
If we're looking for social workers to proactively be able to support farmers directly on their land and to come to their tractor when they're in crisis, that needs to be part of primary care delivery, and that isn't there.
If we're structurally looking to actually make mental health a priority, we'd advocate a mental health envelope of money, a mental health transfer over and above what is on the health transfer right now. We estimate that to keep the government at 25% of overall public health spending in the provinces and territories, that would mean an increase from 7% to 9%, so structurally about $775 million per year to be able to bring that on par with physical health. That's what we advocate is a parity piece, so if the provinces and territories are working within their budgets, 50% to 55% of respective provincial budgets go to health care, but there's nothing specifically for mental health. We highly urge the federal government to look at a mental health envelope itself to transfer to the provinces and territories.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Mr. Johnston, you've mentioned the importance of rebranding mental health services as agricultural mental health awareness. I'm trying to understand why you believe that.
9:25 a.m.
Clinical Psychologist, Manager, Addiction and Mental Health, Alberta Health Services
We've talked a lot about stigma. This is after a long time of.... There have been many really good campaigns to get information out. I think the next generation is that much more likely to access services. For this particular subculture, as I call it, they seem to be resistant to access anything on which you put the label “mental health”, unless they're in an urgent crisis kind of situation. This is something we're doing in an initiative with immigrants, with seniors, putting it under the broader rubric of wellness. We're marketing this a little bit differently. We have a newcomer wellness health facilitator, for instance, in Brooks, because we have a high number of immigrants working at the meat-packing plant. It seems to be a bit more successful with respect to them feeling a little more at ease in coming in.
The other part of that rebranding is where the services are located—
9:25 a.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Alistair MacGregor
I'm sorry, Mr. Johnston, but I have to interrupt. The six minutes have expired.
Mr. Longfield, you have six minutes.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you.
Please continue and finish your thought. We have time.
9:25 a.m.
Clinical Psychologist, Manager, Addiction and Mental Health, Alberta Health Services
Okay. Thank you very much.
We're really taking a look at outreach, at where the services are located. We have psychologists and social workers who work with us. As has been noted, few people in that profession do have a background in farming, so there certainly has to be a sensitivity in offering services that can reduce the stigma as well.
We're really starting to look at what we're calling our services. If you put a big sign out that says “mental health services” or “addictions services”, a lot of people have some difficulty accessing it. There are other ways of going around that. I would suggest, as I mentioned previously, that the ministry of agriculture can play a role in having that be the door to services and rebranding what they actually call it. There might be a better name, but we've come up with more of a wellness approach that would offer the same types of preventive and follow-up clinical services for the agricultural sector.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Great. Thank you.
Mr. Phelps, the website for the Canadian Association of Social Workers talks about “prevention, treatment and rehabilitation”. How are these services being balanced right now? I get the impression that we are fighting fires versus the prevention side. I mean, mental health is one of those things that really come and go. Sometimes you don't know whether the person is going to be better. How do you measure whether they're better? When you get past a cold, you can kind of tell you're past a cold, but mental health is not the same as physical health.
9:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Social Workers
No, it's not the same as physical health, and it's not funded the same as physical health.
9:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Association of Social Workers
It's about looking at the prevention side of things, looking upstream, looking at how you can have services available to individuals before they have a shotgun in their truck. I think that really is what it comes down to. We haven't done a good job of prevention. We haven't done a good job of putting mental health on par with physical health in the way we deal with it.
Chris was saying how he fell off a roof and went in. There was no question about the services he was going to get, no question about the long-term services ensuring that he had follow-up visits for his physical health. We don't have the same thing when it comes to mental health.
The prevention side, yes, needs to be there. That can come through national campaigns, specifically hotlines or websites on how to deal with wellness, how to deal with day-to-day stresses, and how to prevent getting into a situation where you think the only out is a shotgun. That is a piece of it, but it has to be followed by treatment.
One thing we've noticed is that when you look at mental health now across Canada, it's out of the shadows in the sense that a heck of a lot of people are able to talk about mental health now in a way they never did before. I imagine Chris 10 years ago wouldn't have shared that story about his cousin. We're coming out of the shadows now, and having those conversations, but you have to have the services. It's almost like gaslighting people when you tell them, okay, you can come out and talk about the issues—that you have this issue, that you're stressed, that you have to do something for you and your family—but then there are no services you can access. That's when we get into crisis.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Right. Thank you.
As I mentioned to both of you before our meeting, we are hearing these very raw stories that are making us think about how we as legislators put the right safety nets in place, working with the provinces.
Chris, you were talking about the trade deals and the impacts. We're very early in the game with the latest version of NAFTA. We're doing consultations with dairy farmers, with their national organizations. Are you plugged into that yet? Could you talk about how you connect with the national body when we're looking at mitigating the effects of trade deals on dairy farmers?
9:30 a.m.
Director and Past President, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
Yes, we're tapped into that, and actually I've been up in Ottawa for the past couple of days at a CFA board meeting. As I mentioned, I'm on the executive. They announced while we were in session that they were having these session groups relative to that.
Here's the kicker: Trump announced his tariffs and immediately announced a $12-billion support package for farmers. No questions asked, here it is. What does our government do? It does the same thing in giving away the market access, but then it says, “Ah, we're going to study what the effects of that are and somewhere down the road we'll get to a point.”
It's that uncertainty that makes us ask why we would go ahead and invest in growth mode in our farms, when we have no idea what support tools are going to be there for us in the future. We can't. It's that level of uncertainty that tells us to hold off, that there's no support here for us and we might as well hold off on investing in that new harvester, that new barn or those 10 new cows that we wanted to buy.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
From your supply-managed sector, the urgency is what we're hearing loud and clear.
9:30 a.m.
Director and Past President, Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture
It's paramount.
There is absolutely no excuse and no reason that level of stress should be put on farmers when you say you're going to study this further. If you know you're going to give away market access, then the next thing out of your mouth had better be, “Here's what we're going to do to compensate for that, like other countries do.”