Agriculture Committee on Nov. 29th, 2018

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

I only have 30 seconds left.

Mr. Forbes, what studies were carried out for Ms. Freeland on the free trade agreement?

[Chris Forbes]

We have a head negotiator who is responsible for agricultural matters during negotiations. I do not know if we can talk about studies here, but we did prepare information for the minister, the cabinet and Minister Freeland in order to advise them on how to proceed. We worked quite a bit with people from the industry to understand the pressures they face.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Forbes. The time is up.

Mr. Peschisolido, you have six minutes.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Chair, thank you. I'd like to thank the officials for attending.

I'd like to begin with you, Mr. Forbes. I want to talk a little about the agriculture sector in B.C. I've attended a few forums at Kwantlen Polytechnic by Kent Mullinix, the head of their sustainable program. He discusses place-based agriculture.

I want to talk a bit about a couple of farms in my area, a larger one and a smaller one. There's Sweet Digz Farm. It's 20 acres, run by younger farmers. It's leased. They produce organic products. Then there is Richmond Country Farms, owned by the Hogler family for over 50 years. Actually, Minister MacAulay visited it a couple of years ago. It's 300 acres, but it's all locally grown, organic. They also create a surplus and they export.

The question I have for you is this: What role can the federal government play in having standards for the organic sector? I believe it's about $5-billion industry in Canada. What can the federal government do, and what has it done, to expand that sector?

[Chris Forbes]

That's a good question. On the standards side, we're obviously working with the sector to develop a new set of standards. I think you will hear a lot from the sector about the importance of having a good set of standards and, as much as possible, a common set of standards across the country. Indeed, I think one of the challenges that the sector faces is international standards, and we do work with other countries, through Jaspinder and his colleagues, on how we can ensure fair access for our organic producers so that their practices are recognized in other countries. That's certainly ongoing work that we do with a number of jurisdictions. I think those are important pieces.

I'll add that, going back to what the minister said previously, we obviously do a fair bit of science and research in the organics area. We've had organic clusters in the past, and we'll have an organic cluster over the next five years. We'll continue to work with the sector on that. We'll go back to what the innovative practices and the new approaches are, and how we can use science and research innovation to move the sector forward.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Another very significant sector in the agriculture industry in B.C. is berries, blueberries and cranberries. Ocean Spray is in the east part of Richmond. There's the Mahal family. Peter Dhillon is trying to expand into the Asian market. Minister MacAulay talked about Asia and China. He didn't talk about Japan or Korea, but obviously those are significant markets as well.

Can you talk a little bit about what the government has done to expand into those markets, and about concrete steps to break down some of the non-tariff barriers that these countries have?

[Chris Forbes]

As you alluded, there are multiple fairly significant markets in Asia. We have China, where the minister was, but through TPP, we have Japan and Vietnam, and of course we have a free trade agreement with South Korea as well. It's a mix of things that we do, I would say. One is working through the regulators to make sure that, when companies come to us with markets they think they can work into, we look into the sector's priorities and how we can make sure that some of those non-tariff barriers are brought down.

We work in-country through our trade commissioners, for example in China, working with companies and with buyers on the ground to help market development. Some of the trade shows the minister talked about—the food and hospitality expo in China and the Qingdao seafood show—are the kinds of things that we can do to help promote Canadian products on the ground.

It's a mix of technical work, to make sure that companies can reach these markets; trade deals, which obviously help get the barriers down; and the work of development and promotion of the markets. Again, some of it is in-country and some is done domestically, but we're working together to try to get some awareness and market development in some of these Asian markets.

[Joe Peschisolido, Liberal, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

As was discussed earlier, another major issue in B.C. and across Canada is labour shortage of farmers. There's a lovely farm in Richmond called Rabbit River Farms. It doesn't deal in rabbits, but it has organic eggs and hens, and it needs workers. Steve Easterbrook desperately needs workers, as do a whole lot of the other farms in the area. We talked about Hogler Farms, and they have workers who come in from Mexico. They've had them come in for the past 12 years, and then they have to go back. It's disjointed.

Can you talk a bit about what we can do to fix this perennial problem?

[Chris Forbes]

As you know, the government is reviewing both the seasonal agricultural worker program and some aspects of the temporary foreign worker program that pertain to agriculture and some of the processing sector needs. From our standpoint at Agriculture Canada, obviously the responsibility for the regulation and administration of these programs sits with colleagues at Employment and Social Development Canada and with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

We work with those departments and the sector to make sure that the sector's real-time experience is understood by our colleagues, that the communication is there, and that issues, when they come up, get raised and resolved. There's also long-term policy development where we work hand in hand with stakeholders and government colleagues to deal with some of these key issues, both at the overall policy level, including the caps on workers, and at the implementation level: process, timing, inspections and all these issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Pat Finnigan]

Thank you, Mr. Forbes.

Thank you, Mr. Peschisolido.

Now we have Mr. MacGregor for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you Mr. Forbes, for staying on and helping us with some of these things.

In the six minutes I had with the minister, I was talking about the AgriStability program. Unfortunately, there wasn't much time for a more fulsome exchange. I would appreciate it if you could continue what you were about to answer with regard to the panel that identified the issues with the complexity, timeliness and predictability.

I also note that the total expenditures for business risk management have decreased by 10%. By the next fiscal year, we're going to see them fall by 48%. This seems to be in stark contrast to some of the concerns we hear from our producers. They see more variability in the years ahead, being impacted by climate change. Can you explain how we're seeing a 48% reduction in costs in the next fiscal year with probably more unpredictability going ahead?

[Chris Forbes]

I'm not sure of the 48%. Why don't we look into that for you? That seems a bit much, unless I'm missing something in the supplementaries versus the....

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

I have it here in the notes from the Library of Parliament. By the next fiscal year, 2019-20, “the planned expenditures will fall by 48.0%.”

[Chris Forbes]

Christine, do you want to talk about the 48%? Then I'll come back to the overall direction.

[Christine Walker, Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Management Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

They are funded out of statutory payments, not out of voted appropriations. The fund will be replenished in the following year. They come in for only one year.

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

Okay.

[Chris Forbes]

Whatever farmers need will be paid out.

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

So the department's efforts on AgriStability specifically....

[Chris Forbes]

If I can step back, it's a review of the full set of BRM. It's not just AgriStability.

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

That seems to be the punching bag—

[Chris Forbes]

It has a lot of interest from folks, but there are others, such as AgriRecovery and AgriInsurance, that are significant expenditures.

We did have a report from the panel to FPT ministers in the summer. They came with a few recommendations. Some of it was about finding more private sector risk-sharing that we could do to help. Some of that stuff is not full private sector risk and not really a risk the government should be covering, so can we find ways to help develop products in the middle? Under one of our programs, we launched a call for proposals from academics and others to look at what some of those models might be. We'll work with the provinces on them over the course of the coming months.

I don't want to go on too long, but we are also working with national stakeholders, and the provinces are working with regional stakeholders to build on some of the direction from the panel.

Quite honestly, we'll have to come at some of the tricky challenges of how to ensure something that is both accurate and fair to the producer, and timely and simple. That is always a bit of a challenge to balance. That's one of the issues we'll have to tackle.

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

I want to go into the debate over the carbon tax. It seems as if we have two armed camps. I'm trying to find a way forward that respects the role that our producers play. We know that well-managed agricultural practices can have incredible carbon sequestration potential. That was very much the subject of one of our committee's studies.

Looking ahead, can you provide a little more detail on how the department is looking at the carbon sequestration potential of our producers? What kinds of programs are you using to try to encourage that to happen? I think that could potentially be one of our greatest assets and weapons against climate change.

[Chris Forbes]

I think you make an excellent point.

Under the agricultural partnership with the provinces, we do work together. Environment and climate change are one of the priorities. I'll make a couple of points in that regard.

Carbon sequestration and carbon emissions are a big part of the environmental research we do, whether that's on livestock or cropping practices. At Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and with the provinces, we do a fair bit of primary research, if you will, to look at what more we can do in that area.

The second part that you're raising is how we can get practices out there. I think that's an area where we need to keep working. We do work with the provinces on how to disseminate best practices. Between the two of us, I think that's an area where we can do more work.

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

Finally, on your links with the deputy minister from the Ministry of Health with respect to the healthy eating strategy, I met with....

I'll take fruit juice producers as an example. Often, fruit juice producers are taking the excess fruits or the ones that are undesirable for eating. If they're going to be impacted by a recommendation in the healthy eating strategy that fruit juice is maybe not as healthy as some people make it out to be or believe it to be, have you made any analysis of how that would impact our producers—i.e., their ability to get rid of excess apples and so on?

[Chris Forbes]

I don't know if we've gone that specific—