Evidence of meeting #126 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 communities.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Tom Rosser  Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Brian Gray  Champion, Indigenous Network Circle and Assistant Deputy Minister, Science and Technology Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Mervin Traverse  Departmental Elder, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Jane Taylor  Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food
Bev Shipley  Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC
Michel Gros Louis  Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products
Vincent Lévesque  Founder, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products
Jackoline Milne  President, Northern Farm Training Institute

12:15 p.m.

Founder, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Vincent Lévesque

Okay. I will conclude by saying that we are building our own plant to develop the concentrate. In fact, we are having some problems with the Research and Development Centre: the process is a little lengthy, the centre has been under renovation for four years, and I have access to it only twice a year. So we are trying to manage on our own, like ASIFP. Furthermore, we don't have a bank account, and we are doing all the work ourselves.

12:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Thank you, Mr. Lévesque.

Now we have Ms. Jackoline Milne, for up to seven minutes.

January 31st, 2019 / 12:15 p.m.

Jackoline Milne President, Northern Farm Training Institute

I want to thank you for inviting me here. I'm talking to you from Hay River, Northwest Territories. I'm the founder of the Northern Farm Training Institute. I'm a Métis person. I'm married with three children. I've seen that we need to build and contribute to the solutions to address northern food insecurity.

The deficit that is aggravating this is that we don't have domestic skills in domestic food production, which we need to complement the wild harvest systems for our indigenous and isolated communities. Right now, we have a functioning 260-acre farm campus in Hay River, which is the largest land-based farm in the Northwest Territories. We have successfully trained 250 first nations people and other people from 33 different communities.

Our students have already gone on to build gardens in their communities, build small farms and teach other people to produce domestic food.

Our program has been successful because of its unique structure and our genuine experience in teaching and producing food in an isolated place. We know how to produce sustainable, domestic vegetables that are appropriate in the northern setting and domestic meats in the north and we understand how to empower northern people, indigenous people. It helps build confidence. Hands-on experiential education is what we're doing. People need to learn the entire spectrum for growing food and how to build a business, how to access appropriate funds.

Our campus is scaled and has systems in place to feed 200 people in a northern, remote community setting. It's a full-spectrum operation. What does that look like?

We do have a deficit of skilled food producers and teachers in our isolated communities, but there's a fast way to turn this situation around. We need to empower local people to restore their food systems according to what they want, through direct capacity building, and have local indigenous people running newly created training and support centres that are around the theme of food. It can be domestic food and wild food. We need these two systems to complement each other.

In Canada we have over 600 indigenous-type communities that are often managed by bands. Our focus has been on the most vulnerable, most isolated extremities, but we do have a national vision. We believe there's a system that we can deliver.

We figured that we could build 50 training centres that would also be food-producing centres, and we would call them “from the land” learning hubs. Each centre would need to have a core of four to six people to run the centre, teach and produce the food. These small centres could service 10 to 15 regional communities around them.

From our experience, because of the isolation, with low-mechanized systems on bio-intensive garden farms one person can feed 10 people. We've already worked this out. In Canada, with a population of 1.6 million indigenous people, if our goal is to reach 10% of the population and strengthen their food skills—wild food skills and domestic food skills—we need to focus on this. In five years, we could empower 30,000 people throughout the most vulnerable communities.

The program is not like a traditional academic one. We could do it faster because the programs can be shorter, and run on weekends. We can have young, old, men, families, women, and an array of topics: gardening, animal husbandry, fishing, wild harvest skills. Once established, these training centres can even contribute to their own financial stability because they will be able to produce products to sell. There are a lot of options here.

We've calculated the financial scenarios that would be needed to implement this. We have some suggestions for even accessing nutrition north funding to invest in the critical infrastructure that needs to be built for domestic food systems. We know we have a serious crisis in Canada. I'm calling you from the north. I travel to remote communities. This is a serious problem. We need to address it immediately. We need to have federal funding directly supporting the solutions here.

Sadly, there's a dilution and an inefficiency that has been happening for decades because of the way administration goes through regional government. I'm sure we can correct this problem.

We have a 10-year plan for restoring food stability and independence in indigenous communities across Canada. We know we can do this, but we just need your help. We're already doing it. We're confident we can build whole food systems that will have lasting and profound impacts on indigenous wellness, health and economy. We need to foster independently managed food systems at the local level. It's already working. I'm here to tell you. I'm here because it's working.

Thank you.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Thank you, Ms. Milne. Thank you for your passion. I think that's really good.

We're going to go to our question round.

We'll start with Mr. Berthold.

Mr. Berthold, you have six minutes.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Indeed, the passion among our witnesses today is quite obvious. I'd like to thank them for being here and testifying before us. I have so many questions to ask that I will certainly not have enough time.

This document is outstanding, Mr. Gros Louis.

In the report, will it be possible to take into account what's in the document? I've been told yes.

It addresses a very large number of issues. I'll try to ask you my questions quickly and will ask that you give me short answers.

Mr. Gros Louis, where do we stand following the tabling of this report?

12:25 p.m.

Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Michel Gros Louis

The report wasn't considered. It contains recommendations, but they have never been implemented.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

So it's still valid?

12:25 p.m.

Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Michel Gros Louis

The report cost our department $150,000, but it was not acted on for several years. Every time I have the opportunity to put it on the table, I do.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

I personally like this report. We'll be able to take it into account in our study, and I am convinced that we will be able to draw many lessons from it. I only flipped through it a bit, but I could see that it answered many of the questions I had.

Would you tell me if the legal status of land, particularly in Quebec, is still a major problem?

12:25 p.m.

Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Michel Gros Louis

In Quebec, the situation is really special. First, we don't have treaties like those in the west that include some form of agricultural assistance. There is the James Bay Agreement with the Crees, but the other nations don't have treaties. We are therefore working with the Quebec Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, whose conditions aren't flexible and are very difficult for First Nations to meet.

As for land, there are certainly a lot of claims, and there is a lot of land. As I said earlier, there were 1,000 farmers in Kahnawake. Today, there are five or six. There is no help, either federal or provincial, and the criteria are inaccessible.

For us, in Quebec, we are talking about start-up and not succession. Some people have small community gardens. Surprising traditional cultures, including very old varieties, are still being discovered. Yet people live in pain and misery. No program really helps us. At least ASIFP is keeping us alive and helping these people.

I would say that Quebec is the poor relation when it comes to indigenous agriculture in Canada.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

You are raising another issue we will probably have to consider in the study. Indeed, this involves federal, provincial, and municipal jurisdictions.

12:25 p.m.

Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Michel Gros Louis

It's very complex.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

It's a real brain-teaser.

12:25 p.m.

Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Michel Gros Louis

In my opinion, Quebec should create an association or an organization to manage its agriculture with federal funds, because at the provincial level, indigenous agriculture and agri-food participation is not taken into account at all.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

Thank you, Mr. Gros Louis.

12:25 p.m.

Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Michel Gros Louis

I could give you an example, briefly. Quebec adopted a special law to allow game to be served in restaurants, such as moose meat. There were 13. This involved hunters, but in the course of the process, indigenous hunters were not considered. The program was cancelled because there were hygiene issues and facilities needed to be put in place.

But the fact remains that we were not involved. And that is what happens in general, across the board. The Iroquoians, Mohawk and Huron were agricultural peoples and grew many varieties of corn, squash and other produce. Unfortunately, that has almost disappeared today.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

I would also have liked to talk about your efforts to preserve traditional seeds, but I don't have enough time left. I'll come back to it later, Mr. Gros Louis.

12:25 p.m.

Director, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Michel Gros Louis

In the context of the Paris Agreement, Canada and all the countries of the world put together a program to preserve the world heritage of seeds, including all the varieties of beans in Canada. It is a very good program, which I took part in, with scientists. I've also taken part in harvests with seed keepers, the Iroquoians, who grow crops from these seeds and are trying to keep them alive. It's truly extraordinary.

At the research centre, in the Three Sisters project, we studied bean crops. Among the traditional varieties we found one whose nutritional value is a hundred times superior to the variety being sold on the market currently. However, the issue is how to grow and market that traditional variety.

There is a problem with the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. I exerted pressure to have an indigenous branch in it, but this was refused. If we grow organic produce, the crop insurance included in the partnership does not cover it, and that is a problem for us.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

Thank you.

Ms. Milne, it would be good if you could send the committee your plan, or an assessment of your project, so that we may be made aware of its scope. You are passionate about this project and I think it would be worthwhile for the members of the committee to take an interest in it. Thank you very much.

In conclusion, Mr. Lévesque, I want to congratulate you. I see that you have a very keen entrepreneurial sense. If you are setting up any projects, it would be good for you to tell us about any obstacles you encounter, so that we may deal with them appropriately.

12:30 p.m.

Founder, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Vincent Lévesque

I can tell you about the obstacles I've encountered, very briefly.

I went from laboratory research at the research centre to an application at the plant level, and I never had access to the atomizer. It's been four years and I never had access to a device to create a powder concentrate, where water is extracted by spray drying or a freeze-drying process. I still don't have access to these devices. There is an accessibility issue.

There is also a labour shortage, because employees have taken sick leave. The plant is being renovated and it will take a year. I am stuck. I am unable to develop my product in the plant. So I organize things alone, with what little means I have, as usual. I will develop my product one way or another, and I will provide work for indigenous people.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Thank you, Mr. Lévesque.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

Luc Berthold Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC

You are always the one who gets interrupted.

12:30 p.m.

Founder, Agricultural Society for Indigenous Food Products

Vincent Lévesque

And I'm trying to be brief, too.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan

Mr. Longfield, for six minutes.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you.

I was going to finish with Mr. Lévesque, but now I’m going to start with you to make sure we have time. The last time you were cut off you mentioned access to funds, getting banking attention. First of all, congratulations on your product. People know there are traditional healing methods that we should have more access to but we don’t. You have a product there that could tap into the alternative medicine network in Canada.

You mentioned access to funding. Could you expand on that? You made a comment about not being able to get into the banks, and then you got cut off. Was there something there that we need to put out?