Agriculture Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

I call the meeting to order.

We welcome everyone to our meeting this morning as we pursue the mental health challenges that Canadian farmers, ranchers and producers face.

With us this morning as an individual and a former member of Parliament is the Honourable Ted Menzies. Welcome to our committee, Mr. Menzies.

Also, from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, we have with us Mr. Rick James-Davies, senior director, western operations. Welcome to our committee, Mr. James-Davies.

Now we'll start with opening statements of up to seven minutes.

Do you want to go ahead, Mr. James-Davies? The floor is yours, or whoever....

[Ted Menzies, As an Individual]

You looked at me and asked for him.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Go ahead, Mr. Menzies.

[Ted Menzies]

Thank you. I'm always willing to relinquish the floor to one of our CFIA representatives.

Thank you very much to the committee for, first of all, taking the time and the effort—and the passion—to listen to some of the witnesses you've had. This is a very important subject.

It's great for me to be back with the committee. I've had the pleasure of sitting on both sides of the table. I started my career long before politics on this side of the table, and it's good to be back here.

It is a very important and, I would suggest, overdue subject for us to discuss, and when I say “us”, I mean farmers. I want to speak from the heart today; you won't have any prepared text in front of you to read.

I was involved in farming for 30 years. I grew up on a farm. I was farming for 30 years before I came here in 2004. It's a great life.

Farmers are a tough bunch. We're six feet tall and bulletproof—and don't ever tell us we're not—until we start having troubles. Also, that's not just for men; it's for women as well. I know a young woman who has unfortunately become a casualty, a statistic—but she's not a statistic; she left children and a husband behind, and no one quite knows why. We are very reluctant to speak about it or to anyone about it, and that's our biggest challenge as farmers, and when I use the term “farmers”, I mean farmers and ranchers.

We have many stresses, and so does every industry and every sector have stresses. Some of the farmer's stresses are unique: commodity market fluctuations; trade deals around the world, which we're hearing much about; skeptical consumers who want to know how we're producing this food; government interference, to be very frank; and food trends.

One of these that farmers have a unique challenge with and that creates great stress is the weather. There's no larger stress than watching your entire year's investment and effort become the equivalent of this carpet on the floor in 10 minutes. That's a challenge for any producer, whether there are issues with livestock or grains.

We also have more serious stresses coming from social media right now. I think you've had some presenters who actually reflected on that, on the attacks on public trust. That's one of the biggest issues. How do we gain the public's trust that we are doing the right thing?

We have financial stresses as farmers. There's no doubt about that, but we're such an easy target. Anybody can drive down the road and see the great big equipment out in the field, the big shiny red, green or yellow equipment. Wow, these big farmers: they must be greedy. They must be selfish. Are they worried about the food they're growing for me?

The same people who begrudge a farmer becoming larger to survive used to shop at a corner grocery store and now shop at the big box stores for the same things.

Don't forget that we consume the same food that we sell to our customers, and we do the best to provide a safe and nutritious food supply.

Farming is a solitary life, whether it's on horseback out checking cattle or spending hours in a tractor or in a combine, with 18- to 20-hour days. I can remember many of them myself. In our busy season, there would be weeks on end, days on end, where I would never see a bed; you would just lie down and nap for a while. We're against the weather. This fall was a prime example across the Prairies with the snow, and it wasn't just the Prairies, but Ontario as well.

We have a very unique work-life balance. We live on our factory floor. You look out the window and you see something to do every time you look out—this should be done, that should be done. How do you balance it with making sure that you spend time with your family? That's one of the challenges: the guilt of not spending enough time with your family.

I want to share one experience.

As politicians, you've all given many speeches. The most difficult one that I ever gave was a eulogy to a church filled with over 500 people, two children, a mother and wife, and the grieving parents of my best friend. What do you tell them? Do you say, “I failed because I didn't see that?” You can't tell them they failed because they didn't see it.

Therein lies the importance of what you're studying at this committee, because I still wouldn't know what to tell them, and I don't think many of us would. That's why we need professional help. We need to encourage people to speak up, to stand up for themselves and not succumb to the stigma of it being a mental problem, because it's no different from any other challenge we face or any other disease. It's good that we're talking about this at this committee.

It's not only that, but we can be our own worst enemy as farmers: “I can do this all myself; I don't need help.” I did that for a while, until I got a phone call one Sunday morning from a little girl who said, “Daddy's on the floor and mommy's in church, and I can't wake him up.” And neither could I when I got there.

He was the same age as me. I went home and said to my wife, “I'm going to change my way of doing things”, and I hired a couple of people to help me and I took some of that stress out of my life. If you can't recognize that, if no one's helped you recognize those sorts of things, you continue doing it until you end up a casualty lying on the floor.

I rethought my responsibility to the farm and I rethought my responsibility to my family, and I knew which one needed to take priority.

I'll just wrap up here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay, yes; we're just about done.

[Ted Menzies]

How do we overcome the stigma? That's the biggest issue. We have many organizations that are working on it, and if I'm running out of time, Chair, I'd be happy to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Yes, we'll have questions.

[Ted Menzies]

—elaborate on some of those.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Menzies.

Mr. James-Davies, you have up to seven minutes. Thank you.

[Dr. Rick James-Davies, Senior Director, West Operations, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Good morning, Mr. Chair. My name is Rick James-Davies. I'm a veterinarian. I'm also the senior director of west operations at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

I appreciate this opportunity to speak about this important subject, mental health in the agricultural sector, and specifically the impacts on farmers, ranchers and producers when they must hear stressful news.

I'll be speaking today about the CFIA and the way we approach and deliver difficult news.

To set the stage a bit, I want to explain that CFIA is a science-based regulatory agency. Our business stems from a very broad mandate that encompasses food safety, market access, plant protection and animal health.

Mr. Chair, as a regulatory agency, sometimes the CFIA has to make the hard decision to depopulate herds or flocks to protect animal health from the spread of disease in Canada.

We do this to protect all of Canada's producers, farmers and ranchers, and the country's economy.

We've had to do this during avian influenza, BSE, bovine tuberculosis and others. They are not simple decisions, Mr. Chair.

They’re not taken lightly.

The CFIA is aware of the impact such decisions have on producers, farmers and ranchers.

The way in which the news is delivered can make a big difference.

We start in how we train our inspectors and veterinarians. We take recruitment and training of our staff very seriously. We select the best person to do the job. To become a CFIA inspector or veterinarian, the candidate needs to demonstrate analytical thinking, interpersonal skills, teamwork, planning, organization, dependability, good communication, initiative and judgment. Once hired, our employees are required to attend a prerequisite training program, or PREP, which covers all the fundamentals of not only inspection but also values and ethics and how to have difficult conversations.

The training doesn’t stop there.

There is additional operational guidance provided for program- or situation-specific activities, such as how to respond to a disease outbreak.

Let me explain a bit about how we operate when an outbreak occurs.

In the event of a disease outbreak, CFIA mobilizes experienced staff from across the country to assist in the area where the event has been identified. CFIA inspectors, veterinarians and other staff who respond to the high-stress situations are acutely aware of the potential impacts on producers. Those responding are well trained in the specific outbreak on how to work with and speak to producers, farmers, and ranchers regardless of whether it's avian influenza, BSE, TB or something else.

I want to add that this approach also provides mentoring to our more junior staff in a buddy system so that younger inspectors learn from their more seasoned colleagues.

I have some real-life examples of how we interact with producers. One I lived through in 2016 was the bovine TB outbreak in the west.

I'll give you a little bit of context. CFIA doesn't work in isolation.

We partner with other federal departments, provincial counterparts and industry associations to the greatest extent possible.

We also take all the necessary precautions to maintain producer confidentiality. Provincial health authorities are one of the key partners so that producer health and mental health remain a focus. When necessary, we refer producers to the appropriate provincial partner to support their health.

When it came to TB in 2016, a representative of the Alberta Beef Producers was fully embedded in our emergency operation centre. They were able to provide valuable insights on the impacts of CFIA's activities on producers and on how we might mitigate some of them. We held regular twice-weekly calls with the Alberta and Saskatchewan cattle associations to make sure the right information was getting out. In addition, those associations were able to help direct producers back to CFIA or one of our partners to get the answers they needed.

Regular town halls were held in the producers' communities.

Several CFIA specialists were present at each of these town halls so that specific questions on testing, surveillance and compensation could be addressed.

As well, our partners were there so that the producers had direct access to those other departments.

Case officers were assigned to every producer.

These case officers were CFIA inspectors trained and knowledgeable in all of the elements of the investigation. They could answer most of the producers' questions as well as ensure that the producers were able to speak to the specialists on very specific technical issues.

We visited producers on their farms and in their homes, and we sat down with them as much as we needed to. Every situation is unique. Every farm is unique. Every producer's needs are unique.

We recognized this.

Producers who said they were not satisfied with the information they were getting from their case officer or the specialists were referred to me as the senior person in charge to see what more we could do to help, and what other resources we could bring to bear.

I can say that CFIA takes special measures to make sure that producers involved in an event are seen as individuals. They're not simply part of an investigation. Thus, after an investigation, we always take the time to do what we call a “hot wash” to review how the overall operations went and what we could have handled better or differently. We also routinely review and revise our guidance to inspectors who work in these challenging situations, and the agency and its inspectorate are involved between disease outbreaks so we can learn from our hot washes, continue best practices, review those challenges, and put plans in place to address them moving forward.

Additionally, feedback from the affected producers, farmers, ranchers and their associations is taken into consideration with a view to how we will respond to these events in the future.

Mr. Chair, as I said at the beginning, the CFIA is a science-based regulatory agency, and we as a regulator at times must deliver difficult news to producers, farmers and ranchers. We walk a very fine line in balancing the obligations we have as regulators with those of being understanding and sympathetic to the situation the individuals find themselves in. We try to do both with the help of our partners to the best of our abilities.

Thank you again for the invitation to speak today.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, sir.

Now we'll go to the question rounds.

Mr. Dreeshen, you have six minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses. I appreciate the testimony.

Mr. Menzies, I know you have come here as an individual; however, you have a wealth of experience working with producers throughout the county and again throughout the world as far as agriculture is concerned. You mentioned some of the stressors, and I think that's really what is important for us to consider. There are the threats we have by anti-farm activists. We have social media attacks. People have probably recognized, by listening to the testimony, just how difficult it is.

We also see the role of government. There are the carbon taxes and the regulations. There are the rules on neonicotinoids. Those of us in the west see the idiotic approach that is happening on that issue. There's the food guide and front-of-package labelling. All of these things are added stressors that agriculture people have to deal with.

I think back to, as Mr. James-Davies mentioned, the bovine spongiform encephalopathy. I was so frustrated watching the cow from the U.K. flopping around on Canadian television. We were dealing with that for years. If nothing else, I wish the CFIA had gone to the CBC and told them that this was inappropriate and had nothing to do with what was taking place on the ground. However, we allowed that type of media presence to frame the issue, unfortunately.

There are lots of these kinds of stressors. If people think that wasn't a stress, I think they're mistaken. I'll also throw in the potato cyst nematode issue out of Edmonton, where no one ever found it afterward. To most people, it looked as if it were a lab issue, not a health issue. There was frustration associated with that. It's another industry that felt it was being decimated.

Mr. Menzies, you've also worked on Ag for Life. I know that last year the key approach to that had to do with farm safety. This year the organization in which you are involved is talking about education and the opportunity to educate the public about what agriculture is truly about.

I need a minute or so at the end, so I might cut you off, but perhaps you could explain what the thoughts are here and how your organization is looking at trying to educate the Canadian consumer, even those living on the farm, about what is really taking place.

[Ted Menzies]

Thank you for that question. It is very important—and I've been cut off before, so I accept that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ted Menzies]

This is one of the joys after politics: You're allowed to take part in some of these not-for-profit boards. You think, “I've spent my years in politics. What can I do now?” You can give back; I am, through Ag for Life in Alberta. There's also working with Ag in the Classroom across Canada. The two are partnering together on this. There was a successful safety trailer put together by Ag for Life. It went out in June last year across county fairs, schools, and all sorts of different community events. About 90,000 people, including children, got to go through this and learn about farm safety in interactive, technological ways that the kids love. We're going to mimic that with an agriculture education trailer that we think will be as effective.

There's a disconnect. Everybody used to have an auntie or a grandfather or a great-grandfather on the farm. There's a huge disconnect. Farmers are the best stewards of their land. They live on their land. They survive on their land. They want to pass it on better than the way they got it. They do their best to produce a safe and sustainable food supply. It's so easy to criticize them, and it's because of a lack of understanding of what goes on on the farm. Farmers are very vulnerable to this, so the more education....

This committee needs to be commended for raising this as an issue and in the broader context of the attacks on modern agriculture. We in this country are the benefactors of climate change; because our climate is changing, we can produce more food. We now have the responsibility to feed more people, because others will not be the beneficiaries of this changing climate.

Anyway, go ahead and cut me off, sir.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, sir.

What I want to present is a motion:

That the Committee request the testimony of representatives from Farm Credit Canada, 4-H Canada and Farm Management Canada to explain how their programs will address the mental health needs of those in the agricultural sector and that their testimony be included in the Committee's study on the mental health challenges that Canadian farmers, ranchers, and producers face.

Hopefully I have read it slowly enough that it can go through. We had this announcement a couple of days ago. There was a certain sense of frustration on the part of those of us on this side that we were not engaged with that. However, there were government members who certainly were up to speed on what was happening.

If these are the three groups that have been charged with this, as the minister's announcement presented, then because it's tied into this study, I believe it is something that we should make a decision on very quickly and it would still be in order for us to discuss.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Is there debate?

Go ahead, Mr. Drouin.

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

I have no objection. I agree that the witnesses should appear. I just want to mention that not all the members of the government were there either. It was an announcement by the government, and not by backbenchers. I don't have all the details of the announcement either, since I attended only part of the announcement. These witnesses should appear before us. We completely agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Are there any further comments?

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

To that particular point, it was unfortunate that you weren't, but certainly there were two S. O. 31s presented in the House and a question to the minister from members of the committee. Maybe they can explain why it is that they left a couple of people from the Liberal side out of the announcement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Are there any other comments?

Go ahead, Monsieur Berthold.

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

I simply wanted to support my colleague's motion.

We're preparing to make recommendations to the government. If a program is announced during our study, I think that we must take into account the government's proposals and new program, to avoid proposing the same things. I think that we've all worked extremely hard together and without partisanship on this study. It would be a shame if our report were to end up on a shelf, if the government has already decided what it will do. I think that we must have the opportunity to speak with the program participants and the minister next week. I'm sure that we'll have questions for the minister about this matter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Okay.

Go ahead, Mr. MacGregor.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Yes, I will be supporting this motion.

The only way I found out about yesterday's announcement was through The Hill Times brief announcing that the minister was giving a press conference on this issue. I welcome it, although it would have been nice to maybe have had a bit more warning, given the work that we're doing.

It's a welcome announcement. I just hope that this committee's hard work on this subject and our eventual recommendations will also factor into the conversation. It's very worthwhile to have the people who appeared at the press conference yesterday come before this committee, because I'd really like to see flexibility from the minister and the government to pay attention to the valuable work that we're doing here during the course of this study. Therefore, I will support Mr. Dreeshen's motion.