Evidence of meeting #125 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 4-h.
A video is available from Parliament.
Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC
Okay. I need to keep moving, and thank you so much.
Heather, we talked about a national initiative. In terms of coordinating it and bringing in all the stakeholders—and by that I mean all stakeholders—if you were to take a vision out, how long do you think it would take to bring it together so that we would have a national initiative?
Executive Director, Farm Management Canada
That's a good question. I guess it depends on the stakeholders as well, because of course we have to acknowledge everyone's availability and time, and if there are producer organizations, we want to make sure that we're not doing something at their busy season. Again, good planning and good practices depend on the right place and the right time, so you don't want to do something like this when everyone's completely overly stressed.
I mean, I don't know. I would definitely think that we could look at hosting a first national engagement session, I would say, this fall. It would be a great opportunity, a great round table. It's timely. We're continuing to do our work. Andrea's continuing to do her work. I think the sooner the better, but in terms of dictating when we can launch—
Executive Director, Farm Management Canada
—national initiatives thereof, it's a bit of question depending on who's in the room and what path we can put forward. But I think the important part is to have a sustained commitment from the stakeholders and from government to make sure that it's not a one-hit wonder and that we've taken time to build the capacity to do something really meaningful.
Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC
The chairman has told me I have to wrap up here in a minute.
Since my colleague introduced “Rooted in Strength”—I really appreciate that—when I look at common stressors in the farm, if you go to that page, there's something, quite honestly, really missing. It talks about finances, and we understand why finances are at the top. There are family disagreements, often with succession planning. If we try to understand how that works, the lack of sleep and the workload, I can tell you that if government is not part of those stressors, you're missing a huge component of this book. We cannot continue to move forward by putting barriers in front of our agriculture industry. We went through that last summer when our industry and succession planning was going to be under attack.
Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC
The interest rates are increasing somewhat. We're going to be penalizing farm businesses sharing incomes. We have to talk about governments staying out of our business only for the reason of collecting taxes.
Liberal
Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC
I was supposed to have another minute, but thank you, Mr. Chair.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you, Chair, for my three minutes.
Mr. Hoffort, I'm going to use the last three minutes I have to talk to you.
In the debate that we are having on climate change right now, we know the costs that are going to affect producers, whether it's forest fires, droughts or floods. Unfortunately, the debate that's raging in Ottawa right now is about the costs of meeting the challenge, but what we often don't talk about and I wished we talked about more are the long-term economic costs of not doing anything and what our producers will face as a result.
From Farm Credit Canada's perspective, when you look at the range of programs and services that you offer—I'm thinking of loan insurance and so on—have you done any kind of analysis of what this will mean in the long term for the products you offer to farmers, how the changing climate and conditions are going to be impacting the kinds of services that you offer to farmers? I know that's one of the variables that really do affect their mental health.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Farm Credit Canada
In terms of FCC's offer, our primary role is to provide financing to agriculture producers, agribusinesses and agri-food operators from coast to coast. The only insurance program we have would be more of a credit or life insurance or disability insurance. We're not in crop insurance or revenue insurance or those types of products. I'm certain that individuals in that space would be able to answer you question much more fully in terms of some of the assessments they do and stresses. The other area that we do offer—
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
But nothing in terms of the insurance premiums on loans? Do you foresee people maybe not being able to meet their loan obligations because of the increased effects of climate change?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Farm Credit Canada
In terms of doing a stress test on those types of climate changes, we haven't done something that's forward-looking and goes into the ranges involved. We'd be looking more at things like rapid escalating interest rates, and other things that would be top of mind, I would say, and the potential stresses that would directly impact Canadian agriculture. We haven't done that study at this time.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Okay. Thank you.
I'll wrap up there, Chair. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Okay.
That will conclude this session and our study, other than preparing our report. This has been a tremendous achievement. We're going to put something together that, hopefully, will lead the way to dealing with this very important subject that's often not talked about enough. Now we've brought it to the surface. Hopefully we can have a report that will put forward a path for resolving some of these issues.
I want to thank everyone who was here today.
From 4-H Canada, Ms. Erin Smith, thank you so much for your testimony, and also Elizabeth Jarvis for being here with us today.
From Farm Credit Canada, Mr. Michael Hoffort, thank you so much for taking the time to join us via video conference.
Also from Farm Management Canada, Heather Watson, thank you for taking the time on the telephone. Again, I apologize for having to cut you off so often, but your input was certainly very important.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, everyone.
We will suspend the meeting for a few minutes before going in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]